When Going Into the Woods It's Easy to Get Lost

It is hard to pass up a production of Sondheim's "Into the Woods" so I was quite looking forward to the North Shore Light Opera Society production that opened last night (May 9).

I came away disappointed.  Not that it was a bad production but it was one that had great potential and promise but never quite lived up to it.  All the leads had great voices and the characterizations were mostly spot on.  So what was the problem?

Someone had a production design concept that may have seemed brilliant in theory but simply did not work in practice.  I suspect the script went something like this:

"Hey! For the woods, instead of conventional scenery, lets put some actors in tree costumes and let them be the woods"

"Great idea - and its a big stage so we can populate it with more actors dressed to represent animals -- raccoons, deer and so on.  Lets run with it." 

The result was that for most of the show the stage was filled with a dozen actors with nothing to do except be in constant motion reacting to the main action between the principals.  This was a huge distraction and a number of scenes lost their intimacy as a result.

Sound level was also a problem.  The pit was good but tended to overwhelm the singers who, with one apparent exception, were unmiked and did not have any reinforcement to assist in making themselves heard.

A final problem was personal. I work hard to get seats that are front row centre so my view of the stage is unobstructed.  The Centennial Theatre in North Vancouver seems to have a curse attached to it.  About two years ago I attended a production of "Rent" there (my first visit to that venue since 1973) and, much to my chagrin, whoever makes these decisions placed a further row of temporary seats in front of me and seated some very large and rowdy adolescents in them.  For Into the Woods the designer attached to the top outer edge of the pit large (12 to 18 inches high) letters spelling out "ONCE UPON A TYME" again obstructing the view of audience members in the first 3 or 4 rows.

Despite these annoyances I do not regard it as an evening wasted -- only one that had the potential to be so much better.