Porchlight Music Theatre debuts a revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s modern classic Into The Woods this week at The Theatre Building on Belmont Ave. Though the show still has its kinks, a snappy pace (crucial for most Sondheim musicals), excellent set design, and some good performances make this iteration of Woods a success.

Into The Woods follows the story of a baker (Steve Best) and his wife, doomed to infertility by a local witch, and inserts familiar characters and story lines from classic fairy tales to create both a parody of the stories we grew up with and a surprisingly moving meditation on wish fulfillment and the consequences of our choices. Jack (of Beanstalk fame), played by Chicago veteran Scott Sumerak, is a dimwitted youth who is sidetracked by giants when tasked by his mother (the funny Kristen Leia Freilich) to sell his beloved pet cow. While his vocal style occasionally teeters uncomfortably between reedy comedy and the power of a trained lead, Sumerak is an expressive actor, is clearly familiar with the beats of the character, and delivers his lines to great effect.   A host of additional characters includes the irrepressible Little Red (Jeny Wasilewski), Cinderella (Rachel Quinn) and her wicked family, Jennifer Tjepkema’s Rapunzel, two mugging princes, played by the multi-talented Cameron Brune and promising newcomer William Travis Taylor, and a narrator (Henry Michael Odum) who unwittingly becomes part of the story.

The Witch is played with hammy gusto and in commanding voice by Bethany Thomas. Thomas’s transformation from hag to diva toward the end of the first act should be a nice surprise for newcomers to the show, and though her acting is not exactly subtle she does a nice job conveying the Witch’s multi-faceted personality.  Though Thomas has (and clearly relishes) the flashiest role in the show, at the heart of Woods (and of this production) is the story of the baker’s wife, played with subtlety and depth by Brianna Borger.  The honesty of Borger’s restrained but emotional turn resonates in a sea of outsized performances, and her simple vocal delivery is powerful but never overwhelms her fellow performers or the poignancy of her character’s journey. Borger plays nicely off of Best’s Baker, and the couple’s comfortable interaction adds believability to the central storyline.   

The technical aspects of the production are mostly solid. Artistic Director Walter Stearns makes great use of the three-dimensional space at the Theatre Building, a particularly notable triumph of stage direction being a climactic exchange between Best and a mysterious man (also played by Odum) who may or may not be his father.  The lighting (designed by John Horan) is superb, particularly in its use of blues and greens in Act II. The spare orchestra, led by Eugene Dizon, effectively communicates Sondheim’s score without getting in the way of the performers, and is creatively embedded on stage behind a hedge – one of many effective aspects of Ian Zywica’s immersive woodland set. The most  striking technical aspect of the show is also the most uneven. Projection designer Liviu Pasare uses a beautiful backdrop of a gigantic full moon to display animation that serves the story. A giant beanstalk grows seemingly from nowhere, Cinderella’s feathered friends flit in and out of frame, and in a particularly ambitious sequence an entire part of a scene in Little Red’s grandmother’s house is played out on the screen. The animation is interesting but occasionally distracting, and its rudimentary nature makes its inclusion in the action of the show feel forced at times. Also, that the majority of the backdrop is translucent makes it difficult for actors to move around backstage without being easily seen by the audience.  

Porchlight’s production will improve with the run and is, on the whole, satisfying. Ultimately, it is the complex music (even for Sondheim) of Woods and unconventional resolution of the story that make the show a must-see. As the second act veers into darker territory, with various choices made to advance personal hopes resulting in the deaths of several main characters, the show (like the original versions of many of the fairytales it borrows from) abruptly turns from light comedy to morality play. The characters and Sondheim’s songs give us a stern warning of the potential consequences of allowing the whimsical stories we tell our children to become our own reality, and though it retains its fantasy setting the show becomes one of the most authentic interpretations of our most basic human dilemmas that the stage has to offer.

Into The Woods runs from April 9 through May 30 at the Theatre Building Chicago. Tickets are available through the box office at (773)327-5252 or at http://www.ticketmaster.com .