Lea Salonga goes deep ‘Into the Woods’
"I’m not good; I’m not nice; I’m just right.” So sayeth The Witch, played by Lea Salonga, in Theatre Group Asia (TGA)’s sellout production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, and we’re drawn to her as the central character, beguiling and confusing and unmasking a bunch of villagers as they seek their hearts’ desire in the form of wishes.
Salonga morphs from a wizened, hunched crone into an emerald-dressed witch-without-powers by Act II, as Into the Woods gives her an even bigger perch to shine as the star, investing Sondheim’s examination of human foibles with gravitas, grace, and wisdom. And such a voice: deeper now, full of life’s lessons, still very powerful.
And oh, what fools these mortals be! From the Baker and his Wife, hankering for a kid and willing to scrounge up four items for The Witch (“the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, and the slipper as pure as gold”) from their castmates through trickery and theft, including Jack and his sickly-looking cow, Milky White; a revisionist Cinderella; Little Red Riding Hood flipping open a balisong blade when needed; and Rapunzel, Rapunzel, up in her tower.
Besides Salonga, the rest of the cast includes Arielle Jacobs as Cinderella, Eugene Domingo as Jack’s Mother, Josh Dela Cruz as Prince Charming and The Wolf; Nyoy Volante and Mikkie Bradshaw-Volante play the Baker and the Baker’s Wife, joined by Nic Chien as Jack, Joreen Bautista as Rapunzel, Mark Bautista as Rapunzel’s Prince, Teetin Villanueva as Little Red, Carla Guevara Laforteza as Granny and The Giant, Jamie Wilson as Cinderella’s Father and The Steward, and Rody Vera as the Narrator (plus another role). Lea’s brother Gerard conducts the orchestra.
They all have standout moments. But it’s the interconnected drive of this ensemble, in the hands of veteran director Chari Arespacochaga and Tony-winning designer Clint Ramos, that makes Sondheim’s music and lyrics click on the Samsung Performing Arts Theater stage— somewhat less ornate than Broadway, but bearing local capiz panel touches, even ternos on Cinderella’s Stepsisters—and makes it such a rare spectacle.
Rare, too, in the sense of scarcity. With the power-casting of Ms. Salonga—following her turn in TGA’s Request sa Radyo last year—it’s no wonder the show sold out its 24-performance run in just two days.
Into the Woods marks TGA’s first major musical, originally set to be co-directed by Bobby Garcia, who passed away last year. (A brief tribute was given to him by Samsung Performing Arts Theater managing director Christopher Mohnani and Ramos before the curtain rose.) Earlier, outside in the lobby, the gala crowd included just about any celeb you could think of.
Onstage, after the Brothers Grimm fairytale plots have been reimagined and blenderized into a new brew, bearing grim-and-bearable lessons in Act I, we realize it’s only been a sucker-punch: the happy ending as the curtain closes is but a blissful fakeout to the morning-after realities awaiting in Act II. (Though this act flags a bit, energy-wise.)
When it came out in 1986, Into the Woods was interpreted by some as a metaphor for the AIDs crisis—the blaming and finger-pointing, the indiscriminate deaths littering the stage, affecting everybody. Sondheim disavowed such an easy analysis, and any great art glimpses something both very current and very timeless. The playwright’s subject matter has always been, well, simply life itself: here, the focus is on families, truth-telling, our choices and their consequences. The stuff we all live through. The woods we go through, our fears intact. The ratatat of repeating motifs drills home the lessons, but it’s the quieter moments that remain: like The Baker’s Wife reflecting on princely indiscretions in Moments in the Woods (“Just remembering that you’ve had an ‘and’ when you’re back to ‘or’ makes the ‘or’ mean more… than it did before…”) and the summing up of life’s hard lessons (“Children can only grow from something you love… into something you lose,” laments The Witch).
Kudos to the pair of Princes (Agony!) who make the comic predicament of the wealthy and privileged crystal clear (“I was born to charm, not to be sincere”), and the stellar moments from Jacobs’ Cinderella (On the Steps of the Palace). This is one of those decathlon productions that require pinpoint precision from breath to breath, and this cast brings it all home. While not the most purely catchy or enjoyable Sondheim musical, it’s a pleasure to watch such precision on a local stage.
Lea, of course, has the last word, and her journey as an actress makes this role all the more apt—the performer onstage, revealed as her true self, offering one more bit of advice to our wobbly mortal selves, and those who will rise up after us:
Careful the wish you make,
Wishes are children.
Careful the path they take
Wishes come true, not free…
Careful the spell you cast,
Not just on children
Sometimes the spell may last
Past what you see
And turn against you...
Careful the tale you tell.
That is the spell.
Children will listen...
