Four Corners Musical Theatre Company opens presentation of Sondheim's 'Into the Woods'

Given his decades-long personal and professional association with the late Stephen Sondheim, Four Corners Musical Theatre director Randy West acknowledges he feels a special obligation to get things right whenever his company stages one of the Broadway icon’s plays, as it is throughout July during its month-long run of “Into the Woods” at the Lions Wilderness Park Amphitheater.

But that won’t prevent West from taking a certain amount of liberty with the material, as he said he plans on offering a finale that is perhaps a little more upbeat than the legendary composer and lyricist envisioned.

“I’ve never done this (show) exactly like this before,” said West, who has worked on four previous versions of “Into the Woods,” the first one in the San Francisco Bay area in 1990.

The play — known for the way it contrasts its idyllic, happy-ending first act with a dark, gloomy second act that illustrates the dangers of unintended consequences — sees many of its characters meet a tragic fate along the way, leaving only a handful of them still accounted for by the time the survivors launch into the final number, “Children Will Listen.”

West has chosen to lighten that somber moment by bringing back all those ill-fated characters in spirit form as they join their loved ones onstage.

“You never really lose somebody you love,” he said during a break in rehearsals earlier this week, explaining the new approach he has taken with the final scene. “ … This is probably the most sentimental ending I’ve ever done. But that ending seemed appropriate to me. I think it puts a little more heart in the end.”

West, who has studied Sondheim’s work extensively and can describe even the smallest details of his career seemingly at the drop of a hat, said he doesn’t feel as if he is betraying Sondheim’s vision with that choice. As he pointed out, Sondheim’s work was always layered, revealing multiple themes to anyone who cared to examine it closely enough.

“I tell actors, Sondheim never works on one level,” West said. “The first level you always get immediately, but the second level is deep down. He never writes a happy love song without secretly including a motif that goes in the opposite direction.”

The ambivalence that characterized Sondheim’s work made him one of the more successful figures in Broadway history, earning him multiple Tony Awards, Academy Awards and Grammy Awards, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. West, who counted Sondheim as his mentor and first got to know him in 1983 when West was still the little-known theater coordinator for the City of Phoenix, chose to pay tribute to him by creating a musical revue, “Celebrate Sondheim,” that was performed earlier this year at the Farmington Civic Center.

Now, a few months later, West is mounting his first Farmington production of “Into the Woods,” which he described as Sondheim’s best-known and most frequently staged project. He said the play – for which James Lapine wrote the book — features one of Sondheim’s more enjoyable scores, while also probing the heart of human existence.

“The woods are where you go to have your darker thoughts,” West said. “Most of us have those, but we don’t share them with other people.”

West chose to stage “Into the Woods” in the outdoors setting of the Lions Wilderness Park Amphitheater to take full advantage of those natural surroundings. Each summer, the Four Corners Musical Theatre Company performs one production there, and West never misses an opportunity to do something special with those larger, rustic surroundings that he couldn’t do in a theater.

Last summer, for instance, the company’s production of “The Pirates of Penzance” boasted a full-scale pirate ship, while its July 2021 show, “Mama Mia!,” featured a stream with running water that had been dug into the dirt stage.

This year, West faced a significant challenge in trying to convert the sandstone boulders and desert flora of the amphitheater into a deep forest. So he took a more-modest approach and has relied on creative lighting and the contours of the landscape to do the job for him.

“It’s not loaded with trees, and once the sun goes down, you forget those trees are there anyway,” he said.

West said he has chosen to establish his setting by lighting the handful of existing trees in a foreboding manner designed to create an air of unease. The deep forest is implied but not revealed, positioned off in in the distance over the natural rise that serves as the backdrop for the stage, which is largely a nondescript cinder area.

That figurative approach, rather than a more literal set design that might have included scores of potted trees, seems to fit nicely with West’s overall philosophy about Sondheim’s work and how it is best presented.

“You feel it more than you see it,” he said.

“Into the Woods” will be presented at 8 p.m. each Thursday through Sunday through July 30 at the Lions Wilderness Park Amphitheater, 5800 College Blvd. in Farmington. Tickets are $14 and $18. Call 505-599-1148.

Mike Easterling can be reached at 505-564-4610 or measterling@daily-times.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription: http://bit.ly/2I6TU0e.

This article originally appeared on Farmington Daily Times: 'Into the Woods' opens in unlikely setting of sandstone amphitheater