Stage: Hairy Tale
New company Chocolate Box Theatre are presenting Sondheim’s Into The Woods – a big show in a small venue
I first saw Sondheim’s Into The Woods in the West End, a huge production with a vast and complicated set and a full scale pit orchestra. It was an amazing success, as had been so many of his shows before. Many years later I went along to The Trafalgar Studio, a small scale studio venue where they were staging a chamber version of Sweeney Todd. Todd in its original form had been massive, a huge glowering production that filled the stage of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. I was apprehensive that it could be scaled down, but I was proven wrong. The Watermill’s production was stunning and went on to the USA, where Sondheim saw it and fell in love with the scaled down piece using actor-musicians and no orchestra.
Now three Brighton-based musical theatre professionals, Emma Edwards, Nathan Potter and Simon Gray, have teamed up to form Chocolate Box Theatre, a company dedicated to presenting BIG musical productions in small spaces, and their first presentation is Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant musical Into The Woods which they will be performing at the Marlborough Theatre at the end of July.
Into The Woods is a modern take on classic fairy tales that begins as a lively irreverent fantasy and becomes a moving lesson about community responsibility and the stories we tell our children. When a baker and his wife learn they have been cursed with childlessness by the witch next door, they embark on a quest to break the spell, teaming up with an ambivalent Cinderella, a Prince Charming with a roving eye and a blood thirsty Red Riding Hood along the way! The cast of 17 includes Brighton-based professional actor/singers alongside some of the very best local non-professional performers.
Marlborough Theatre, Tuesday 24 – Sunday 29 July, 7.30pm, £15 www.brownpapertickets.com/event/244350
The Reduced Shakespeare Company The Complete World of Sports (Abridged)
Just in time for the Olympic frenzy, and following a highly successful US tour and run in New York, the Reduced Shakespeare Company are back in the UK with the European premiere of their new show, The Complete World of Sports (abridged). The entire history of athletic competition is revisited in a marathon of madness and mayhem that sees the world’s great sporting events shrunk down to theatrical size.
Among the many questions answered: Is darts really a sport? What does NASCAR stand for? Why do Americans insist on calling a contest in which only they compete the ‘World Series’? Which is more boring – baseball or cricket? Who invented wife-carrying, bog-snorkelling and cheese-rolling? And why aren’t they in the Olympics?
Whether it’s the ancient cavemen or the classical Greeks, the Romans, the Elizabethans or the modern sports media, The Complete World of Sports (abridged) brings you all the emotion, drama and random drug testing of sports.
The Hawth, Crawley, Thur 12 July 7.30pm, £16.50 (Out:smart: £10) 01293 553636, www.hawth.co.uk
