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This has turned into a dark week for Pittsburgh amid the excitement of preparing the town for the fairy-tale hopes of the G-20 summit next month. Life has a nasty habit of turning tragic just when things are going good.
Art imitates life at the Pittsburgh CLO this week with its final production of the season, "Into the Woods," Stephen Sondheim's and James Lapine's gloomy revision of "happily ever after."
This 1987 Broadway musical satirized the American bowdlerizing of the violent and bloody stories of the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault in the first act, then destroyed the fairy-tale perfection in the second.
Despite a few opening-night snafus, this "Into the Woods" is a professionally impressive carbon copy of the Broadway original, with a few local CLO touches thrown in.
The best is casting stage mainstay Tim Hartman as the Narrator/Mysterious Man, an actor who got his start in "Corporal Corpuscle" at the Children's Museum in the Reagan era and still puts on an entertaining show.
Where: The Benedum Center, Seventh and Penn, Downtown.
When: Today and Friday 8 p.m.; Saturday 2 and 8 p.m.; and Sunday 2 and 7 p.m.
Tickets: $24.50-$70.50. 412-456-6666; www.pittsburghCLO.org; The Box Office at Theater Square, 655 Penn Ave., Downtown.
It's the Broadway veterans who make the musical hum, most notably Hunter Foster and Brynn O'Malley as the resourceful Baker and his wife, squeaky-voiced Jen Cody as a tough Little Red Riding Hood and Stanley Bahorek, the dim-witted Jack of beanstock fame.
Beth Leavel, a Tony winner, gets star billing as the Witch who sets the machinery in motion, but her brassy moves were offset by cloudy diction, maybe a fault of the CLO's over-miking.
Director James Brennan, a veteran of the regional musical theater scene, juggles the large cast's woodsy rambles smoothly, although the pacing of Act One flagged now and then.
All paths in "Into the Woods" led to the moving final number, "No One Is Alone." Sara Jean Ford (Cinderella), Foster, Cody and O'Malley hit it out of the park.
Musical director Tom Helm guides the CLO band smoothly through Sondheim's tricky score, and when the massive "Woods" set is working properly, the result is a satisfying evening of musical theater.
