Jordan Fein and Tom Scutt on living the fairy tale in 'Into The Woods'

Director Jordan Fein and designer Tom Scutt have teamed up again for the Bridge Theatre’s magical revival of Stephen Sondheim musical Into The Woods. The pair tell Marianka Swain how they worked together to balance real emotion with theatrical wonder.

Summary

• Tom Scutt and Jordan Fein have designed and directed the Bridge Theatre production of Into The Woods
• The cast includes Kate Fleetwood; Katie Brayben; Jamie Parker; and more
• The director-designer duo last collaborated on the Olivier-winning Fiddler on the Roof

What would happen if familiar fairy tale characters like Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Ridinghood and Jack (of Beanstalk fame) – plus an ordinary Baker and his Wife – crossed paths while on a quest in the woods? That’s the enticing question answered by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s beloved 1987 Broadway musical, and by its current spellbinding production at London’s Bridge Theatre, which does full justice to the material’s combination of playful wit and psychological insight.

The cast is an embarrassment of musical theatre riches, with beautifully grounded work from Jamie Parker and Katie Brayben as the squabbling Baker and his Wife, and from Michael Gould as the wry narrator, while a plaintive Jo Foster and bolshie Gracie McGonigal brilliantly portray coming-of-age characters Jack and Red. Oliver Savile and Rhys Whitfield are a riot as the charming but feckless princes, Chumisa Dornford-May’s spirited Cinderella more than holds her own, Bella Brown brings exquisite vocals to Rapunzel, and, as Rapunzel’s mother, the scheming Witch, the fabulous Kate Fleetwood puts in a career-best performance.

The key to this rich ensemble show is collaboration, and that is also true of the Bridge revival’s entwined creative forces: American director Jordan Fein, whose acclaimed Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production of Fiddler on the Roof won three Olivier Awards in 2025, and designer Tom Scutt, one of the deserving recipients of those awards. The powerhouse pair, who are also a couple, have now teamed up once again – fulfilling the credo of Into The Woods’s jauntiest song, “It Takes Two”.

For Fein, directing Into The Woods fulfils a lifelong dream. “My introduction was seeing the filmed version of the original Broadway cast on VHS as a child,” he recalls. “It became an obsession: I watched it all the time, I listened to the music all the time. It was my first step into theatre nerd-dom. Coming back to it now, I understand it’s about the transition from childhood to adulthood – all those nuances and challenges – but back then I just felt really seen by it.”

Scutt, whose acclaimed design work also features in the West End’s long-running Cabaret, conversely came to Into The Woods fresh. “My relationship with the show is absolutely through Jordan,” he explains. “We’ve been together for nine years. Hearing him sing ‘Greens, greens, and nothing but greens’ [from the musical’s prologue] around the house was my way in – I thought ‘What is this thing?’. I come at it from a totally different angle: from the European performance tradition of these fairy tales, and from British pantomime. But Into The Woods is this wonderful meeting point between the great American musical tradition and British tradition.”

This shared vision is crucial to their striking production – and, in fact, they made the design choices very early on, says Scutt. “We had to decide right away on the layout of [flexible theatre] the Bridge so they could put the tickets on sale! We thought about immersive, but we quickly landed on the end-on layout. That was tied into our faith in the content: we didn’t feel like we needed to over-conceptualise the piece, but rather meet it head on and realise the creators’ intentions as best we could. From there, everything fell into place.”

The result is an unforgettable forest with towering trees into which the characters venture, both a convincingly naturalistic realm and also, as transformed by Aideen Malone’s expressive lighting, an eerily transgressive one. “We wanted as real a forest as possible so the audience could fully invest in the characters’ stories,” says Scutt. “We treat them like real people with real lives. The stakes then feel much higher.”

Yet the big challenge with Into The Woods, notes Fein, is its tonal shifts from emotional drama to absurdist humour. “I actually wound up feeling that the reason people respond to this piece is that, as in life, those extremes – the ridiculous and the tragic – lie side by side, particularly in our world right now. There’s an honesty to that. It’s to the credit of the company that they’ve fully committed to both aspects. Like Kate [Fleetwood] inherently understood the depths of tragedy for her character as well as the comedy.” The design helped facilitate those lightning-fast transitions, says Scutt. “It’s incredibly beautiful and poetic, but we also thought about how to allow for fast entrances and exits, like in a farce.” It helped too, notes Scutt, that he and Fein share a similar sensibility: “We take our silliness very seriously – as do Sondheim and Lapine.”

Scutt likewise had fun incorporating different eras into his costumes. “It’s 1480s meets 1980s,” he explains. “Aesthetically, the production needs a richness reminiscent of those big 1980s musicals. We knew it would then grab our hearts.” Fein gave his cast a range of modern reference points for their characters – everyone from “Prince William and Prince Harry to the Kardashians. That makes it feel very immediate: it brushes off the cobwebs.” Horror buffs might also spot nods to the likes of Carrie, The Ring, Hard Candy and The Cabin in the Woods, teases Scutt.

Another potent element in the musical, and especially in this production, is its thoughtful exploration of parenting, whether it’s the overbearing Witch with her daughter Rapunzel or the Baker and his Wife, whose road to parenthood is a fraught one. “I’m at the place in my life where I have such appreciation for my own parents, as well as an understanding of the complexities of what your parents give you and how you navigate that,” says Fein. “This show asks those questions in such a profound way. Yes, we have the Witch, who does some questionable things, but when she says she was trying to protect Rapunzel and be a good mother, you believe her.” Fein notes that Jamie Parker and Katie Brayben brought their own experience of parenthood to the Baker and his Wife: “I learnt a lot from them. They also feel like a totally real couple, who go from being aggravated with their partner to wanting to rip their clothes off.”

Fein was fascinated, too, by the musical’s examination of the stories we pass onto our children. “These fairy tales are ingrained within us, for better or worse. In Into The Woods, the Baker’s Wife says [essentially] ‘Tell your child what you know, share your experiences’. We have to be careful what stories we tell our children, but we also have to dare to be honest.” Scutt agrees: “Children can take a lot more darkness than you think – if you over-sanitise, it feels like a lie. With this Into The Woods, we’re not afraid of going into the darkness, because it makes the funny parts funnier. There is no light without shade, no joy without pain. You want the audience to go on this journey of experiencing mystery, terror and sheer delight, in order to reach that incredibly human ending – one that celebrates chosen family and community, how the ‘I’ becomes ‘we’.”

Working with Scutt on Fiddler proved that “we could do it together”, says Fein. “We always assumed we could, but in practice it’s a different thing. Into The Woods felt like the next level.” He adds: “I trust Tom so implicitly. His ability to imagine something genuinely extraordinary makes me so much better at my job. I know that what I put on stage is going to be supported by what he puts on stage.”

Scutt says it was slightly “nerve-racking” joining forces, since “the director-designer partnership is difficult. When I get an idea in my head, it can be hard to let it go. It felt very vulnerable for Jordan to trust in my ideas and vice versa, but we both knew it was for the betterment of the show. Our empathy for the characters in Into The Woods was paramount.”

Will we see another collaboration soon? It could well happen since Fein has made the UK his home, he says. ‘I officially moved here in 2019 to be with Tom, and I’m really grateful for how I’ve been invited in – the London theatre community is special.” Coming up next, he’s directing Arthur Miller’s powerful play Broken Glass at the Young Vic.

Fein has been thrilled with the response to Into The Woods, both from Sondheim aficionados and newcomers. “I love this musical and I wanted to share it with other people. I was sitting next to my dad on press night, he’s a retired mortgage broker, and he was able to experience it just as deeply as me. Sondheim and Lapine wrote a piece that’s accessible without sacrificing sophistication – that’s why it speaks to everyone.”

Since Into The Woods hinges on its characters making wishes, would Fein want his own wish to be granted? “I have thought about that,” he admits. “They also sing ‘wishes may bring problems’, which is true. I think we should wish and we should hope, but never lose sight of the fact that the good stuff is hard too.” In the case of this Into The Woods, a combination of wishing and passionate collaborative work seems to have created pure magic.

Book Into The Woods tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Main photo credit: the company of Into The Woods. (Photo by Johan Persson); inset, Tom Scutt and Jordan Fein, the cast of Into The Woods. (Production photography by Johan Persson)

This article first appeared in the February 2026 issue of London Theatre Magazine.