'Into the Woods' review — this spellbinding production has everything you could wish for and more

Read our review of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical Into the Woods, now in performances at the Bridge Theatre to 30 May 2026.

Summary

• Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical Into the Woods comes to the Bridge Theatre
• The ingenious show mixes well-known fairy tales like Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk
• The phenomenal cast includes Kate Fleetwood as the witch and Jamie Parker as the baker
• Jordan Fein's thrilling production has jaw-dropping design by Tom Scutt

If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a spellbinding surprise. American director Jordan Fein, who previously reimagined Fiddler on the Roof, now turns to Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s fairy tale mash-up, and this is a much darker, sexier and more thrilling journey into the woods than I’ve ever experienced before.

The ingenious musical mixes several well-known Brothers Grimm tales, anchored by new creations: a baker and his wife, who long to have a child. But the neighbouring witch reveals they can only lift their curse by procuring four special items: the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, the slipper as pure as gold.

Multiple other characters are expressing “I wish”: Cinderella, who wants to go to the king’s festival; Jack (of beanstalk fame) who wishes his beloved cow would supply milk; and Little Red Ridinghood, who wants to take bread to grandmother’s house. Everyone converges in the woods, along with two ardent princes and a ravenous wolf.

The phenomenal cast, all using their natural accents, firmly ground this story, which has dual benefits: the emotion really rings true, and the absurdity of fairy tale logic intruding upon their lives is properly funny. “You can talk to birds?” a sceptical Little Red Ridinghood demands of Cinderella.

Tom Scutt’s jaw-dropping design sends them into towering, nightmarish woods that are explicitly a psychological realm. Here hidden desires emerge, everyday selves are shrugged off, moral boundaries are crossed, and everyone locates their raging libido.

Jamie Parker’s anxious baker and Katie Brayben’s gutsy spouse are a brilliantly believable couple, bickering one minute, the next rediscovering their romantic spark. Both Jo Foster’s plaintive Jack and Gracie McGonigal’s precocious Little Red Ridinghood experience visceral coming-of-age moments, the latter presented as a full-on horror movie. Red emerges from the slain wolf dripping with blood, like Carrie at the prom.

Oliver Savile and Rhys Whitfield have a frankly indecent amount of fun as the feckless princes, who are erotically attracted to unobtainable women. Happily, Chumisa Dornford-May’s spirited and soulful Cinderella is more than a match for her pursuer.

But the star turn comes from Kate Fleetwood, doing career-best work as the witch. She brings everything from withering disdain and panto villain glee as she bullies these tiresome mortals to tender desolation in her exquisitely sung maternal lament “Stay With Me”. It’s a knockout performance.

Aideen Malone supplies inarguably the year’s best lighting design. Huge shafts of expressive light come flooding through the trees to completely change the atmosphere and suggest an otherworldly presence. But then Fein’s production is packed with unforgettable painterly visuals, such as Rapunzel posed in her tower like the Virgin Mary in a stained-glass window. It has mischievous fun too: Jack’s cow is an adorable open-mouthed puppet, while the princes have 80s tennis player-esque bouffant hair and headbands, and comically large codpieces.

The sneakily profound existential themes come through potently: individual needs versus a collective society, how we make hard choices and process grief and guilt, the immense power of storytelling, and the values we pass down to our children. But this is also a transporting wonder – everything you could wish for and more.

Into the Woods is at the Bridge Theatre to 30 May 2026. Book Into the Woods tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Into the Woods (Photos by Johan Persson)