Into the Woods... Into Multi-Fairytale land?

It wasn't in my radar screen when I screened through the programmes in the Sistic website. Yes, once in a while, I just wanted to fill my weekends with some 'blue clouds' - cool times when my brain & mind will take a good break from work and be immersed in some space, embraced by music or theatre plays.

Indeed, at one go, I bought tickets to several shows:

• Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber @ Marina Bay Sands in July
• Into the Woods @ Esplanade today (August)
• Voca People Singapore Tour 2011 @ Singapore Expo next weekend (August)
• Drum Tao - the Art of Drum @ Esplanade in September

Hm... Lion King is missing from the list as I watched that several years ago when I was in London. Though heard so much good comments about it, I don't intend to go for it... hm... I don't quite animals... hahaha... similarly, it took me a while to buy the ticket to watch Cats, and only when it came Singapore the second time.

Read the outline of the "Into the Woods" before deciding to spend money pay for a  "F" row seat in the theatre. Yes, it pays to sit in the front since I already planned to spend the money. The facial expressions, etc were so clear! It's like watching the "zoom-in" view!

The show assembled characters from several fairy tales - The Red Riding Hood, Cinderalla, Jack and the Bean Stalk, Rapuzel who's famous for her long golden locks! Wow, in Mandarin, we described it as 星光熠熠. Nevertheless, the mix and match of the stories made the show too 'rojak'! It attempted to use the baker childless couple as the link. Nevetheless, all, when put together was just a 闹剧, like周星驰的无厘头movie! Indeed, I was quite disappointed. The story line was not strong, neither was it captivating. It's kind of silly (although it's meant to be a fairy tale) to believe that one had to feed the "white cow" with 3 inedible stuff ~ a red hood, a golden shoe and a lock of golden hair ~ so that it would produce milk that would aid the childless woman to conceive!

Basically, the storyline was weak, I felt. and unfortunately, none of the songs left much impression after the show. I think, the only think I could recall was the gigantic lips of the "giant"! which I thought was quite an ingenious way to portray a giant on the stage! Haha..

While the performance was staged by a local production house, its playwright was first premiered in Broadway in 1987.

More information on "Into the Woods" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Woods