The New York Times is up. Brantley does not like it.
http://theater.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/theater/reviews/into-the-woods-by-stephen-sondheim-and-james-lapine.html "The fairy tale forest of “Into the Woods” has suddenly grown a lot thicker. This 1987 musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, which stirs up the shadows of classic bedtime stories, was never what you’d call uncrowded. But Timothy Sheader’s overreaching revival, which opened on Thursday night at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, has added a whole new bramble of interpretive undergrowth....
....Yet very little feels natural in this exhaustingly busy production. On the contrary, pretty much every element smacks of artifice. Mr. Beatty and Ms. Gilmour’s multitiered treehouse of a set (though ravishingly lighted by Ben Stanton) feels less like part of the sylvan views beyond than a plopped-down theme park installation, like the Swiss Family Robinson segment of Walt Disney World....
....This high-concept repackaging of beloved archetypes feels like the work of an overeager Hollywood production team desperate to tap the tweener market. (The second-act special effects, which are impressive but misguided, conform to that sensibility.)....
....In this version, though, the music is never allowed to hold its own or even to take center stage. Admittedly, much of the cast isn’t up to the demands of an intricate Sondheim score. But even those who are, like Ms. Murphy and Ms. Mueller, find their numbers undermined by the distractions of frantic and unfocused staging. When the songs in a Sondheim show get lost in the woods, you know it’s time for some serious deforestation."