Kate Fleetwood is set to make a bewitching return in 'Into The Woods'

Kate Fleetwood talks about reprising her spellbinding performance as the Witch in the West End run of Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods.

Summary

• Kate Fleetwood is reprising her performance as the Witch in Into The Woods
• The production transfers to the West End in September
• Fleetwood's previous credits include London Road and Macbeth

“This role was definitely on my bucket list,” says actress Kate Fleetwood of the villain – or is she? – of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s ingenious fairy tale mash-up musical Into The Woods. The 1987 show was revived by Jordan Fein in a five-star production at London’s Bridge Theatre earlier this year and is now heading to the West End, with Fleetwood once again starring as the Witch. It’s her character who sets the story in motion, sending the Baker and his Wife on a quest to gather several key items (from familiar characters like Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood) in order to undo the spell that keeps them childless – and, unbeknownst to them, grant the Witch’s secret wish too.

Fleetwood explains that the character feels in line with many of the classical roles she’s inhabited during her wide-ranging career, which includes Tony and Olivier Award nominations for, respectively, an acclaimed Macbeth and the ground-breaking National Theatre verbatim musical London Road. “The Witch feels part of that canon of supernatural powerful women, like Lady Macbeth and Medea, but in a different form. I’ve always wanted to play her.”

It’s also a full-circle moment for Fleetwood, she notes. “One of my first jobs as a professional actress was Arabian Nights. Upstairs from our rehearsal room was the company of Into The Woods, with Sheridan Smith making her debut as Little Red. So that was my first encounter with it: hearing ‘Into the woods, into the woods’ and thinking ‘What is this amazing score?’”

Fleetwood was reintroduced to the show via the 2014 Meryl Streep-starring film adaptation, which her children (with her husband, director Rupert Goold) adored. “That’s the beauty of the piece: it’s intergenerational, and it changes depending on where you are in your life. As a young person, you might respond to Cinderella, then you start thinking more like the Baker’s Wife. I’m at the stage of my children leaving home, so the Witch chimes with me.”

The role, says Fleetwood, is “extraordinary to play”, and she only came to appreciate it more over the run. “It’s so technical to sing – you cannot take your eye off the ball at all. So it’s rich in technical challenges as well as emotional challenges. That’s why I’m so excited to get to do it again.”

Fleetwood and Fein broke down the character into three witches, she explains. “There’s the hag, which is the grotesque version we first meet, the personification of society’s fear and horror of ugly older women.” That incarnation has great physical freedom: she can “pop out from a tree really quickly or leap up on a table. I spent a lot of time at home practising jumping on and off my kitchen table.” Then she transforms into her childlike self “who’s almost coming up for air. And finally the no-nonsense gardening lady, who’s based on Vita Sackville-West and Katharine Hepburn. Famously, Hepburn lived next door to Sondheim [in New York] and she was a very keen gardener. He used to call her ‘the witch from next door’ because she didn’t like her peace and quiet being invaded.”

Into The Woods is fascinatingly nuanced in its characterisation; as one lyric has it, “witches can be right, giants can be good”. Fleetwood sees the Witch fundamentally as “a nurturing woman. She’s a gardener and a mother. She did abduct Rapunzel, I’m not advocating for that. But there’s the underlying trauma of being left by her mother, and being afraid of her child leaving – she makes that connection in the wrong way. Then her big rallying cry at the end, ‘Last Midnight’, is actually very pragmatic. She’s saying to the group ‘The apocalypse is coming, and you’ve got to stop arguing amongst yourselves’. That feels really profound at the moment.”

Remarkably, although Fleetwood’s CV also includes High Society, 101 Dalmatians, and the Les Misérables movie, she never trained as a singer. After falling in love with theatre when her father, who had moved the family to a farm near Stratford-upon-Avon, snuck them into a matinee, she scored child roles with the RSC and went on to study drama at Exeter University. But she sang in subsequent Shakespeare productions, catching the eye of Adam Cork, the composer of London Road. “I think lots of people then went ‘Oh, Kate Fleetwood can sing’,” she recalls. “That’s true for the whole industry: if you’re not given the opportunity to show what you can do, people will think you can’t do it.”

Top of Fleetwood’s wish list now is Momma Rose in Gypsy. “Though I might wait for the amazing shadow of Imelda [Staunton]’s performance to subside a bit,” she quips. She would also love to tackle Chekhov, Pinter, and Tennessee Williams, and perhaps more screen work: she loved doing the period drama Harlots, which was brilliantly led by Lesley Manville and Samantha Morton.

For now, Fleetwood is thrilled to return to Into The Woods with a fantastic new cast, which includes John Dagleish, Laura Pitt-Pulford, Simbi Akande, and Matthew Seadon-Young. “It means I get to change my performance in response to them. I’m really excited about the energy they’ll bring.” She’s also eager to experience the show in the Noël Coward Theatre. “I think Tom [Scutt]’s picture-book design will look enchanting there. I love the intimate, jewel box playhouses. These wonderful songs are made for storytelling, so being close to an audience and connecting to them is going to be amazing.”

There’s also the joy of doing this fairy tale production in the run-up to Christmas, adds Fleetwood. “The lighting, the costumes – it’s just the most beautiful show. I know a lot of people who’ve seen it at the Bridge and are booked in to see it again. But it’s an accessible story too, and I definitely feel there’s a whole new audience who will get to enjoy it in the West End. It’s truly magical.”

Book Into The Woods tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

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

Photo credit: Kate Fleetwood with Bella Brown in Into The Woods. (Photo by Johan Persson). Inset: in Harlots, 101 Dalmatians, and Macbeth. (Photos by Starz, Mark Senior, Manuel Harlan)