Do Stage Designs Impact the Story?

Subject: Although the simple music and redundant lyrics of Into the Woods tended to irritate my ear after a while, the intertweaving story lines and the stage design were quite impressive. Combining just about every fairy tale imaginable into a two and half hour long story and telling the whole thing so that it is believable is a novel idea in and of itself – although I would have to say that the stage design greatly helped the situation.

For instance, the village backdrop that raises three doors to reveal three separate scenes all on the same stage was a clever idea – it pulls the audience together and allows them to see that the stories are already closely related. The forest scenes were greatly detailed with the giant trees, the shrubs, and even the giant rock that rotated to give the audience varied perspectives – these backgrounds forced the audience to see exactly what the director wanted them to see rather than allowing them to freely imagine the fairytale world that they were supposed to be viewing.

Of course, these backgrounds were produced on an extravagant budget (this version being produced on Broadway) so that tends to give the director a bit more leeway in constructing the exact scene that he/she wants. At the same time, we must ask ourselves would the story have been as effective if it were produced on a much more limited budget or with no stage designs at all? This naturally leads to the question of how important are stage designs and how much of the story do they tell?