Cetero censeo "authored" delendam esse

Into the Woods (Bridge Theatre)

This is one of those occasions where I acknowledge that I am in a minority here. As I left, immediately after it finished,* a large chunk of the audience were starting to give a standing ovation.

The material is obviously fabulous.

The set is very good, and I am slightly annoyed that there's no opportunity to photo either the first act trees or the second act devastation - it must have been a very strong 'wind'!

The costumes and lighting** are good, even if by the end I was going "this looks like one of those over-processed HDR photos, doesn't it?" to myself.

The cast are probably fine, and there are a couple of nice touches with the direction (along with some misses).

As with the 'David Thomas and Two Pale Boys' version of Shockheaded Peter exactly 24 years ago, the issue is with the sound. It's not as painful as that was, but it's bad: particularly with the female roles, the sound balance makes them sound like they're squawking when they're singing. It doesn't ruin the show, but it doesn't do any of the actors any favours whatsoever and I have no doubt that they're all better than this makes them sound.

Oh, there is an exception: anyone not in sight of the audience - think Cinderella's mother - has the echo etc turned up to eleven, just to emphasise that they're not really there.

There is doubtless some artistic reason for having a sound mix that makes your cast sound worse than they are, but I can't think of one. Do a better one, and I'd have liked the show a lot more. As it is, it's towards the bottom of the Woods productions I've seen.

* I wasn't going to hang around in any case: it went about 12 minutes over the advertised runtime meaning getting to the station was getting tight given I needed to do some stuff once I got there.

** I'm including the video projection silhouette of the giant in this.