Musical Theater West at Carpenter Performing Arts Center
April 5, 2025
Yes, I bought tickets to see Into The Woods again. I actually feel like I’ve seen it enough, but I found out that Julie had never seen it. So when I saw that Musical Theatre West was doing it, I looked to see if Today Tix had discount tickets and they did. We had planned to have dinner at Hof’s Hut before the show, but Julie wasn’t feeling well so we decided to skip dinner. I had a few errands to run in Long Beach, so that was fine by me. I got there before Julie and used the ParkMobile app to pay parking. I took a screenshot of my valid parking on the phone just to be safe since last time I got a parking ticket (which I successfully fought). Julie paid at the machine. Pro tip: there is more than one machine. There were a million people waiting for one machine, but there were 2 more near the entrance with just one or two people waiting to use them. And since you don’t need to go back to the car to put something on your windshield (you just have to know your license plate number), it doesn’t matter how far you are from your car when you pay for parking. Also, there was a fee added when I used the app. If I had known that, I probably would have just used the machine. Even after stopping at the step and repeat for photos before the show, we had plenty of time to use the restroom and find our seats. It was a nice change from our usual rush.
My cousin had seen this show the week before me, and she asked how I enjoyed it. My response was that it was passable. I have seen far better and far worse productions of this show. Better, notably, was the last tour I saw come through the Ahmanson with Stephanie J. Block as the Baker’s Wife. That was a FANTASTIC production and was also the most recent one I’d seen so I was comparing this production to that. To add to that, when I saw the Old Friends Sondheim tribute concert a few months ago Lea Salonga and Bernadette Peters sang Children Will Listen. How can anything compare to that? The MTW director came onstage to introduce the show (as he does) and told us that they use their fundraising to bring children to see the shows and they brought many children to see the first half of Into The Woods. I was remembering that as I was watching the Wolf give the tamest, least-sexy performance of Hello, Little Girl I’ve seen. He managed to make that song seem family friendly. It was kind of weird. As Julie’s first time seeing the show, her impression was that it was very witty and well done, but I think that’s more of an homage to Sondheim than to this particular production.
Am I glad I went? Yes. Am I glad I didn’t pay full price? Also yes.