Into the Woods

Westport Country Playhouse announced last week that it’s staging a new production of Sondheim’s Into the Woods in May of 2012.
The WCP season follows the calendar year rather than the school- year model which so many other regional theaters prefer. The theater’s 2011 season is just about to begin, with Christopher Durang’s Beyond Therapy running April 26-May 14. So Into the Woods is part of NEXT season, the rest of which probably won’t be announced for ages.
The word’s out because the Sondheim musical is a co- production with Baltimore’s Center Stage, which will present the production first, in early spring of next year, at the END of that theater’s customary autumn-to-spring sched. (If you’re interested, the whole Centerstage 2011-2012 season got announced last week: a month-long visit from Chicago’s Second City troupe; Sheridan’s The Rivals, directed by David Schweizer; Mamet’s American Buffalo; the world premiere of Marion McClinton’s adaptation of Toni Morrison’s novel Jazz; Martin McDonagh’s A Skull in Connemara, directed by BJ Jones; that Into the Woods thing we’ve been talkin’ about; and a season-closing show yet to be announced.
Both Westport Country Playhouse and Baltimore Center Stage have new artistic directors. In February, Center Stage announced that British theatrical talent (He writes! He acts! He directs!) Kwame Kwei-Armah will be the new artistic director, following the 19-year run of Irene Lewis. Though she’ll be leaving at the end of the current season, Center Stage’s 2011-12 season was largely Lewis’ doing. This is similar to Lamos’ situation when he joined Westport last year; Mark Lamos took over WCP last year; the impending 2011 slate will be his first full season there.
So who’s directing Into the Woods? Lamos! If the operas and verse plays I’ve seen him do are anything to go by, this should be an intelligent and articulate attempt to capture Sondheim’s psycho-fairy tale tunes. Lamos is clever, but he likes to be colorful and comical as well. Really intriguing choice, this.
Center Stage has a few prior connections with Connecticut theaters: It premiered a James Magruder translation of Marivaux’s Triumph of Love which was later turned into a musical that was later done at both Center Stage Yale Rep. The Rep’s 2007 production of Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind was directed by Irene Lewis, who did the same show at Center Stage earlier that same year. Before taking on Baltimore, Lewis was an Associate Artistic director at Hartford Stage, where Mark Lamos was artistic director from 1980 until the mid-1990s. Lewis’ predecessor as artistic director of Center Stage was Stan Wojewodski, who left in 1991 after 16 seasons to become the artistic director of the Yale Rep and dean of the Yale School of Drama. (Wojewodski left Yale in 2002 and is now based at Southern Methodist University in Texas.) Oh, and one more: The Westport Country Playhouse’s Managing Director, Michael Ross, held the same title at Center Stage, not to mention at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theater and at Hartford Stage before that.
Enough coincidences and community interactions to fill a fairy tale.