The Fiasco Approach

During the debut run of a radically reimagined "Into the Woods" at New Jersey's McCarter Theatre, co-director and performer Ben Steinfeld noticed "a strange older guy" in the audience laughing at unexpected moments in the show. "And at the blackout at the very end we heard him say 'Wow' right before the applause started." It was Stephen Sondheim.

"Luckily, I didn't know he was in the audience because we have an agreement that if anyone knows someone big is coming to the show, we don't talk about it," Steinfeld said during a recent visit to San Francisco. "He came backstage after the show and said he was very moved and excited."

James Lapine, who had written the fractured fairytale book to go with Sondheim's score, had already seen the production and recommended it to Sondheim. "Once we realized they were really into it," Steinfeld said, "it turned out we had a better shot of getting into New York and London and on the road."

Steinfeld is one of the artistic directors of Fiasco, an ensemble theater company created by graduates of the Brown University/Trinity Rep M.F.A. acting program. While Fiasco had already made a name for itself in New York and regional theaters with its break-the-rules productions of stripped-down Shakespeare, "Into the Woods" marked a large step up. The Fiasco production of the Sondheim-Lapine show is now on a national tour, playing in the same theaters where such mega-hits as "The Book of Mormon," "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Kinky Boots" have played.

Its next stop is the Golden Gate Theatre, running March 7-April 2, and the tour has been organized by two big-league producing companies: the Dodgers ("Matilda," "Jersey Boys") and Networks Presentations ("Finding Neverland," "The King and I"). The Dodgers and Networks didn't have the Fiasco production in mind when they began exploring the idea of a new tour of Into the Woods to take on the road.

"I think the Dodgers and Networks went independently to the authors wanting to do a tour of the show, and Stephen and James said if you're going to tour it, you should tour the Fiasco one," Steinfeld said. "So it's really been Steve and James who have been such ardent champions of the production."

to each of its shows is to pull together its core members to collaboratively find ways to tell a story that can find creative inspiration within the limitations of cast size and budget. Co-directors Steinfeld and Noah Brody were part of the original cast of 11 that often played double and treble roles, pulling props and costumes from what could be an attic that had been collecting family memorabilia for decades. Other than a lone pianist on stage, the actors play all the instruments.

In the first act of "Into the Woods," Lapine takes a sardonic wink at several familiar fairytales, mashing up such stories as "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Little Red Riding Hood," and "Rapunzel," while adding several new characters. The first act ends in happily-ever-after fashion, with the notion that you should be careful what you wish for coming crashing down on the characters in the second act.

"James Lapine himself very generously pointed out that stripping away a lot of the pageantry of the productions he has directed has allowed a lot of the writing to come forward in a more powerful way," Steinfeld said. "I think Sondheim's sensibility is in many ways an off-Broadway sensibility, and then sometimes when you try to stretch that to the size and expectations of Broadway, it doesn't always hold." The Fiasco troupe is currently workshopping another Sondheim musical that may have originally suffered from bloat.

This tour is the first time a Fiasco production has been performed without the originating actors. "A lot of what's in the tour comes from the framework of the original production because that stuff really worked," Steinfeld said. "So we wanted people who could execute those original choices, while realizing that the stuff that works best is when actors have brought their own sense of creativity and spontaneity and emotion to their choices. It's an experiment we wanted to try, to see if this can work without the original cast doing it, and I think the answer is yes."

The theaters where the original Fiasco production played ranged from 400 to 800 seats, but now it's in houses with upwards of 2,000 seats. "Making the leap to the big theaters has worked really well, surprising us all, and the set looks better than ever because of its height and texture. It still feels very much like an acoustic show even though it has the electronic help to fill a big theater."

Even in a big theater, the stripped-down approach provokes what Fiasco tries to do in all its productions. "We always try to leave space for the audience to meet the production halfway," Steinfeld said. "Sure, you're asking more from them, but without knowing it, that's what every audience wants. They don't want to have every blank filled in, and we choose shows that can operate on that level of imagination."

Holding together the core group of the Fiasco company after 10 years is getting harder as it members grow older, start building families, and look to reach out to other opportunities. "It's challenging," Steinfeld acknowledged, "but the company is committed to try to keep working together as much as possible, and we accommodate one or two missing pieces if someone else has something they want to do."

"Into the Woods" may be a tipping point for this little theater that could. "Certainly this tour of 'Into the Woods' means our work is being shared with audiences that would never get it see it," Steinfeld said. "We had absolutely no idea that that would be what would become of the experiment. That's why we took the name Fiasco. It's a tongue-in-cheek way of saying you have to be willing to risk total disaster in order to eventually achieve your greater goals."

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