Tillamook players are on song with ‘Into the Woods’
Story and photos by Jordan Wolfe
For the TODAY
Once upon a time Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and a cow named Milky-White visited Tillamook for their happily ever after — and brought a menagerie of fairy tale characters along.
“Into the Woods,” the celebrated musical twisting and interweaving classic fairy tale characters, is magically transforming Tillamook’s Barn Community Playhouse into a fairy tale forest.
The show, written by James Lapine with music and lyrics by the late celebrated composer Stephen Sondheim, premieres this Friday, Nov. 6, with an opening night gala that includes complimentary hors d’oeuvres and one beverage.
“It is going to be an absolutely fabulous night,” said Director Chris Chiola of the Tillamook Association for Performing Arts. “People are going to walk out of here singing the songs.”
“Into the Woods,” running through Nov. 22, has been on Chiola’s mind since the ’80s when the musical premiered.
“I used to babysit a cousin that was in love with it, and she listened to the soundtrack constantly,” he said. “So, I've had the music in the back of my head forever. I've had it frontwards and backwards since the early ’90s.”
Chiola estimates he has seen the taped Broadway production more than 20 times and has watched it live in Cannon Beach, Portland, Lincoln City and Newport. Even with all that musical knowledge, however, there was still room for doubt in directing such an ambitious show.
“I've never thought myself capable of doing a musical,” he said. “There's a lot of moving parts with this, and it's like, ‘Let's just do it.’”
For the past decade, there has been a musical drought at the theater. Once upon a time, the troupe would produce large, iconic musicals like “The Wizard of Oz” and “Hello, Dolly” in Tillamook High School’s Don Whitney Auditorium. Since moving to their permanent home at the Barn Community Playhouse in the early 2000s, staging musicals became difficult, but not impossible. This return requires a cast of 22, one of the largest the playhouse has seen.
Prior to the pause in musicals, the association produced “Dames at Sea” in 2015 — and one of the stars, Julie Bucknam, is returning for “Into the Woods” in the iconic role of The Witch.
“It's a show I’ve wanted to do for 25 years,” she said. “It has so much depth to it and so many wonderful characters in it. It's not just a couple of leads; every character is really important.”
Two of those characters are a pair of princes, played by relative newcomers and rising stars Logen Steinbach as Cinderella’s Prince and Steve Sewell as Rapunzel’s Prince, who get their time to shine in their satirical duet “Agony.”
“It feels good to give back to the community, to be able to offer something entertaining,” Steinbach said. “It's just fun getting on stage and meeting new people.”
This is Steinbach’s first musical and he admits to not feeling confident in his singing chops when rehearsals began.
“He didn't think he had much of a voice, but he most certainly does,” Sewell said of his fellow prince. “Our voices — our timbre and our tone — are very similar and complement each other I think wonderfully.”
“Absolutely blown away,” were the words Chiola used to describe the singing talent that came out of the woodwork to be in the musical.
“This is a fairly small theater, and when you have even soloists singing, it just fills the room, especially when the entire company comes out and sings a couple of the songs,” Chiola said. “It’s incredible how good they are.”
After 11 years, the cast and crew seem poised to deliver a special night of theater and are excited to bring music, dance and joy back to the Barn Community Playhouse.
“I come to practice after a long day and it reinvigorates me just as this place always does,” Sewell said. “Something about it, just coming here. It's fun, it's magic. But really, it's the people — that's the magic.”
“Into the Woods” opens this Friday, Nov. 6, and runs for three weeks through November 22. Performances begin at 6:30 pm on Thursdays and Fridays and at 2 pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets are $10 to $20. The Barn Community Playhouse is located at 1204 Ivy Avenue in Tillamook. For more information, go to tillamooktheater.com or call the box office at 503-812-0275.