Within our shared cultural imagination, ‘the woods’ function as a fertile metaphorical space – a place into which we must inevitably venture in order to confront unforeseen forces, the wiliest of demons, our most intimate desires and, most formidable of all obstacles, our truest selves. 

We programmed, made, unmade, remade, postponed and finally realised this work during the period in which our society lived the central metaphor of this work. The COVID-19 global health pandemic was an existential crisis in every sense of the term: one that laid bare structural inequalities, failures in leadership and the dynamics of rampant individualism. Not to mention, the associated costs of each of these – literally lives and livelihoods. No-one was left unscathed. Neither Melanie Hillman nor I could make a production of Into the Woods that didn't address the Giant in the room: i.e. those deeper provocations about life, death, human nature, moral turpitude and late twentieth/ early twenty-first century materialism that run like electric currents through this work. Who are ‘we’? Who are ‘they’? Who is included/ alienated/ demonised? As I go about doggedly pursuing my wants, do I inevitably trample on others? And if so, does that matter? 

Presented by Watch This; Co-director, Melanie Hillman; Musical Direction/ Supervision, Ned Wright-Smith & Trevor Jones; Choreography; Amy Zhang; Set Design, Sarah Tulloch; Costume Design, Jodi Hope; Lighting Design, Rob Sowinski; Sound Design, Marcello Lo Ricco; Photography, Jodie Hutchinson