Into The Woods
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Book by James Lapine
A Northern Ireland Opera production, His Majesty's Theatre, Perth
March 2023
Director: Cameron Menzies
Choreographer: Jennifer Rooney
Set and Costume Designer: Niall McKeever
Lighting Designer: Kevin Treacy
★★★★★ OPERA NOW
Capturing that sense of movement is scenographer Niall McKeever’s fabulous set. Dominating the stage of the Lyric is the enormous fractal vortex that pulls you into the show – like you’re being compelled through a dark forest path or swallowed down the belly of a wolf. It also mirrors the turbulent thoughts circling the minds of these ever-troubled characters
Kudos too to McKeever for the costume design, which somehow manages to encompass everything from greasy denim and kitchen-sink realism to Highland dress and Arthur Rackham’s book of Irish Fairy Tales'
'The lights dim and the mist clears to reveal a towering wooden vortex, which will suck into its forbidding heart a jigsaw of human dreams, quests and ambitions'
'It’s staged in and around a stunning set by Niall McKeever: logs and ladders criss-crossing high above two staircases to form receding rings, as if leading deep into the subconscious. It suggests that the “woods” of the title aren’t only a place where dangerous urges come to the fore, but also a moral maze where (unlike in the original fairytales) the characters are confronted with the often disastrous consequences of what they wish for'