Eric Rosen, artistic director of Kansas City Repertory Theatre, opens the Rep's 2009-10 season with the Tony Award-winning musical Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim. Broadway director Moisés Kaufman will direct.
Although Sondheim's Into the Woods is inspired by historical stories such as Cinderella, Jack and the Bean Stalk, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood and other now-familiar fables collected by The Brothers Grimm, it is not a sanitized version of fairy tales set to music. Rather, it is a complex examination of what lies beneath the fairy tales. As originally told, these fables were often dark and foreboding. Over the centuries, however, they have been turned into morality tales for children. Analytical psychiatrist Carl Jung, and many others, believe the fables speak to the fundamental nature of the human psyche and it is this dark side of the stories that Kaufman will explore.
Kaufman, considered to be one of America's most innovative thinkers about the theatre, is artistic director of Tectonic Theater Project in New York City. His recent Broadway production of 33 Variations, starring Jane Fonda, received five Tony Award nominations, including for best play and best performance by an actress. He and is also well-known as the Tony Award-nominated director of I Am My Own Wife (originally produced by Rosen in Chicago), The Laramie Project and Gross Indecencies: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. On October 12, Kansas City Rep will participate in a one-time, nationwide staged reading of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, written by Kaufman and other members of Tectonic Theatre Project.
Into the Woods premiered on Broadway in 1987 and received ten Tony Award nominations and won for best score, best book and best actress in a musical. Since that time, the show has had numerous productions including a 1988 national tour, a 1990 London staging and a 2002 Broadway revival which won Tony Awards for best revival of a musical and best lighting design.
Sondheim is the recipient of an Academy Award, numerous Tony Awards (including a Special Lifetime Achievement Award), multiple Grammy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. His musical theatre work also includes A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins, West Side Story and Gypsy.
The cast for Into the Woods features the following New York actors:
Claybourne Elder (Cinderella's Prince/Wolf) originated the role of Hollis in Sondheim's Road Show and can be heard on the cast recording. He will appear in the upcoming world premiere of Frank Wildhorn's Bonnie and Clyde at the La Jolla Playhouse. New York credits: productions at The Public Theatre, Times Square Arts Center, Barrington Stages, The York, The Triad and Danny Kaye Playhouse. Readings and workshops include Michael John LaChuisa's A Star is Born with Idina Menzel.
Euan Morton (Narrator) received an Olivier Award nomination for originating the role of Boy George in the London production of Taboo, a role he reprised on Broadway (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Award nominations and the Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway Debut). He also performed in the recent Broadway revival of Cyrano De Bergerac. Off Broadway: American premiere of Leaves of Glass, Howard Katz opposite Alfred Molina, and Measure for Pleasure (Obie Award).
Brynn O'Malley (Baker's Wife) is a veteran of the Broadway shows Wicked, Sunday in the Park with George, Hairspray and Beauty and the Beast. Regional credits: Avenue Q at Wynn Las Vegas, Oklahoma! and Meet Me In St. Louis at Paper Mill Playhouse, She Loves Me at Arena Stage (Helen Hayes nomination), Arsenic and Old Lace at Baltimore Centerstage, and Into the Woods (Baker's Wife) at Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera.
