If you go ‘Into the Hoods’ tonight, you’re in for a big surprise. Who knew that life on Britain’s inner-city estates so closely mirrored the plots of several famous fairytales? In ZooNation’s hit street-dance show (which borrows the idea, but not much else, of Sondheim’s musical ‘Into the Woods’), Li’l Red and the Wolf are an aspiring singer and a grasping producer; Rap-on-Zel is the landord’s grounded daughter, and DJ Spinderella wants to man the decks at the Prince’s ball.
Entertaining transpositions all – but director/choreographer Kate Prince’s show isn’t really about the stories. In this version, there’s nothing scary or resonant about these classic tales, and the Ruff Endz estate seems like Butlins next to all those enchanted forests of yore. That’s because ‘Into the Hoods’ is all about the dancing, and the steamroller spirit of its young company. The dialogue and narration are all pre-recorded; so are the non-stop, chopped-up songs, from the likes of Prince, Kanye West, Roots Manuva and, er, Coldplay. That leaves the cast free to spin, jerk and flip in remarkable, fluid displays of bendy-limbed mobility.
I wanted more – bigger, more intense, more euphoric – dancing, and for it, I would have happily sacrificed the workaday storytelling, which involves two truant schoolkids collecting four gifts for Rap-on-Zel’s eighteenth birthday. The show flirts with a downbeat climax, as if to prove that, in real life, there are no fairy-tale endings. But this isn’t real life. It is, in its own way, as much a soft-hearted fantasy as any West End musical. It’s also studded with funny, pugnacious set-pieces: a Loony Toons-meets-‘The Matrix’ kung fu fight between hero Jaxx and drug-dealer Giant; Spinderella’s ugly stepmum lip-synching to Whitney Houston. And it’s performed by a lithe and dynamic company whose own excitement is pretty difficult to resist.
