Chatsworth House host Sondheim's musical Into the Woods in a ground-breaking production for The Chatsworth Players

Gear up for Halloween with witches, ghosts, wolves, giants and all your fairytale favourites when The Chatsworth Players bring Stephen Sondheim’s creation to life.

This will be the company’s first musical and has been made possible by an Arts Council grant of £9,175.

The production will be staged in the intimate 100-seat theatre at Chatsworth House from October 12-15, 2022.

Ten new members have joined the company for Into The Woods which centres around a baker and his wife who have been put under a curse by a witch, which prevents them from having children. In order to lift the curse, they must go “Into the Woods” and find the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, and the slipper as pure as gold. While Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red, and lots of other fairy tale favourites become intertwined, this show is definitely not a panto! Act II reveals the real-life consequences of marrying a Prince, straying from the path, and chopping down a beanstalk…

The Chatsworth Players were formed in 2007 by retired professional actress and director, Sylvia Jackson. Sadly, Sylvia died in 2020 of Covid. The company is now run by a steering committee chaired by her daughter Lindsay. “This production of Into the Woods reaches back to one of the original reasons that mum founded the Players,” said Lindsay. “She wanted to bring people together from the disparate groups across the Peaks to perform something really ambitious and worthwhile, that the individual groups wouldn’t be able to do on their own. This production will give our local talent the chance to shine in one of the greatest modern pieces of musical theatre. Sylvia would have loved it! And she would also have loved to see the many new faces - both on stage and behind the scenes that we've attracted to work with us. I know you're going to love it!"

Into the Woods will be directed by Lindsay Jackson, with musical direction by Andrew Marples.

Tickets and more information at www.chatsworthplayers.co.uk

The Chatsworth Players have been performing at Chatsworth House since 2008. They typically perform classic plays that complement the setting. Since lockdown though, the Players have branched out. They performed a modern piece outdoors last summer called Heroes and brought a modern play, Lettice and Lovage, to the theatre last October, This summer was also their first entry into the Buxton Fringe with Flowers for Algernon, and the lead actor. Marcus Grant, was nominated for Best Actor at the Fringe.