My Quality Day: Into the Woods and Into the Woods

Sunday, November 2, 2025

Into the Woods and Into the Woods

You know I love theater, even though I don't seem to attend as many plays as I'd really like to. However, I managed to get to the last performance of Into the Woods at West Shore Community College. Glad I didn't wait too long to get a ticket. They sold out the entire final weekend.

You also may not believe that I've never seen Into the Woods before. My loss. I would like to see multiple productions of it. Meanwhile, this one was great! I've said for years that the best play they ever did at the college was The Wizard of Oz because they had such a standard to live up to since everyone has seen the movie multiple times. However, this one was right up there.

I had a crummy seat and didn't get many good pictures (I always restrain myself if there is a caution that pix are not allowed, but there was no such warning). This is the scene when Cinderella and her step-sisters are off to the ball, Red Riding Hood is on her way to Granny's, and Jack is off to sell the cow.

Speaking of the cow... although I like to act, most of my experience in the theater phase of my life was with the staging aspects. The cow was a puppet, and it was unbelievably good! Its handler was dressed in black and appeared on stage with it all the time, but it wasn't disruptive at all. The cow as so expressive! In the next picture, Jack is talking with Milky White (the cow's name). You can see the puppeteer in the cap.

The stage at WSCC is not large. They really need a new auditorium (in my opinion). However, the staging and choreography of a fairly large cast was phenomenal.

In this scene from Act II, you can see that the large trees rotate to become the Baker's house, Cinderella's throne room, and Jack's cottage.

There were three other trees on rollers (see one to the left of the center "house") that the stage hands moved around to create different locations "in the woods."

The trees are gray, and the colors are changed with the lighting. Both of the pictures I got show it in green, but they changed the mood of the "woods" with many colors and pattern effects.

There were also two scenes with a scrim. I was at a bad angle to get a picture of either. Basically, this is a gauze panel that when light shines on it from the audience side it looks opaque, but when light shines from the stage side, you can see through to the "inside."

The lyrics are snappy, the message is actually good. The performance was professional level.

After the show (which is nearly 3 hours long), even with the return to Standard Time, I was able to hike the short trail aroung the pond at WSCC, so I went Into the Woods! Most of the color is faded, but the low light on this treeline was great.