It’s good that director/choreographer Robert Longbottom has lead a production of Into the Woods before. In 2016 he staged the Stephen Sondheim & James Lapine musical at Theatre Under the Stars in Houston. That experience helps when you have a very limited schedule before performing the show at the Hollywood Bowl for over 50,000 people in one weekend. The three performances of Into the Woods begin on Friday night.
Longbottom first came to prominence as the director and choreographer of the original production of Side Show. He’s also helmed revivals of Flower Drum Song (first seen at the Mark Taper Forum) and Bye Bye Birdie plus the musical The Scarlet Pimpernel.
But nothing can prepare you for the quick schedule and immediate requirements of doing a musical at the Hollywood Bowl. Which was the topic of conversation when we spoke in mid-June by phone. Here are excerpts from that interview.
What did you learn from your experience with Into the Woods in Houston that will help you put this production together?
Just how important it is to find people to really sing this well. This is a truly tricky score. It’s very complicated. It’s the Hollywood Bowl. Even if Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine don’t see it – I’m not sure they would – I want them to be proud of this musically.
Though stuffed with overlapping storylines and multiple characters, Into the Woods is a fairly intimate musical. How will you marry both the needs of the show itself and the fact you’re in an enormous venue?
They solved part of that for me because of those television screens. As I’m directing I’ll make suggestions for a good close-up. If we weren’t using the televisions I’m still obliged to find the stillness in the moment and what’s around it that leads to that stillness. It is a challenge. It is an intimate musical and a grand scale with a lot of characters that meet and have to engage.
In 2014 Michael Schulman wrote in The New Yorker that Into the Woods is easy to get wrong because Lapine’s book tacks “between farce and tragedy, winking at the absurdities of the original tales and then guiding their characters through calamity and heartache.” Is he correct and how do you navigate those shifts in so short an amount of time?
You can’t allow your actors to get ahead of the story. They can’t be smarter than the characters in the moment they are in. Every journey has to have real stakes. Life and death stakes. If that isn’t there whatever else is there in terms of farce and humor and crazy convoluted plots woven together becomes fake. I want every character to hurt deeply and ache and have these epiphanies. I think it is important to take the journey just like the characters do – step by step into the woods.
When Adam Shankman directed Hair at the Hollywood Bowl, he told me, “I can’t speak for everybody who’s been before me, but I think I vastly underestimated the amount of work that was going to be required to get it done.” How have you prepared for the work ahead?
I had good practice as director/choreographer at Radio City for the Christmas show. That was a very truncated rehearsal period. So I’m used to going to war. I want to be spontaneous in a room, but in situations like this I like to have a plan A and plan B.
It’s the tech week that is so sobering. We share two different events with shows by the LA Philharmonic. Teching during the day is definitely different. I’m doing as much as I can in advance so when I get into the rehearsal hall I can piece together what I need to do.
This is perhaps the most star-studded of the Broadway musicals performed at the Hollywood Bowl. How and why do you think Into the Woods is the musical that attracts so many major names from Broadway?
Everybody wants to sing it. I think it is on everybody’s bucket list. I remember seeing it at the Martin Beck Theatre [in New York – home of the original production]. Like most who saw it, I loved the first act and I didn’t understand the second act. It frightened me. Fast forward and songs like “No More” and “Last Midnight” and “No One Is Alone,” these things resonate differently as you’ve crossed the threshold. I love the second act. People want to be the Baker or the Baker’s Wife at some point. To do it on a big big scale was tempting to a lot of people.
This musical premiered 33 years ago in San Diego. What do you think the key to its appeal is?
Because you get to bring your inner kid with you. It demands that you do. When I did it three years ago, “Children Will Listen,” if ever there was a time we needed that song! It still grows and is still necessary and it just says we’re not listening to that advice. There’s a lot of bad behavior all around.
I think people go to the theatre to be entertained. But this strikes a nerve that continues to grow as you get older. The metaphor of the woods hasn’t lost its potency. We’ve all had wish fulfillment every day and we say those words over and over. It’s that collective stuff that brings us together and back to shows we love.
Main photo of Robert Longbottom by Ed Krieger. All photos courtesy of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association