Preview: ‘Into the Woods’ an interview with director Toby Trusted

Meeting Toby Trusted, two weeks out from opening night of his rendition of ‘Into The Woods’, was an insight into watching the ADC come to life.

Beyond the colour scheme of his clothes (a lavender and white ensemble of knitwear and linen which would make Ian McKellen blush), he blended into the furniture of the otherwise empty ADC bar, sans his large stack of furiously edited notes. Toby seemed to me to be one of these rare people who simply has 48 hours in the day rather than 24, declaring “[his] life is split between rehearsals and admin, and occasionally work, just a little bit”.

A project like ‘Into the Woods’ is an evidently monumental feat, and Toby explained how he’s been talking to the band and the team for months in the run-up to the show. He told me in brief how, ‘They’ve all been rehearsing, and it’s just now coming together (…) we’re just now seeing the set being built, the lights being planned (…) in a week or so it’s all just going to interweave, and we’re going to get a show.”

Toby made it sound seamless, and indeed, watching it onstage, it very much looks that way, but this has been a serious artistic process of grit and creativity. Toby first saw ‘Into the Woods’ on the ADC’s shortlist, and to his own account, immediately said, “I’m going to have to direct this.”

Through Camdram, he then built a dream team of designers and artisans, all students, who could help translate his vision to the stage. Toby was adamant that the writing was the driving force of the show, and he didn’t want to seek to reinvent the world, but rather “find something that resonates (…) you don’t want to be fighting the script.”

And he’s right not to. Sondheim’s ‘Into the Woods’, a darkly comic retelling of classic fairy tales, is a masterpiece of writing and musicality. It dances the line between Grimm and Disney deftly, more often than not thematically and narratively falling into the former. Toby was adamant that aesthetically the show should maintain the aesthetic trappings of the latter, saying, “I really like the idea of the whole set, costumes, everything being very colourful and very whimsical. A lot of productions lean into the darkness of the show in an aesthetic sense. I really wanted to avoid that (…) this world, especially in Act One, is full of colour.”

He drew on inspiration from stained glass windows, or, more specifically, “the trees in Dr Seuss” for inspiration when building a colour palette for this world that bursts with colour, concealing the malevolence within. We discussed how the idea of refracting light felt thematically right as well. “You start in this Wonderland, and you think you know where you are. And then in act two, you realise you’re in a wonderland, but you’ve still got real people. You’ve still got real characters.”

The rehearsal process commenced at the start of this term as Toby explained, “the longer people have with the text, the better.”

“You need that space so that you’re not just looking at the scene and going, ‘Oh, where are you standing in this one?’ What are you standing there?” Instead, “really thinking about character (…) thinking about why.”

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The process of character building was deeply constructive and collaborative and came about through ‘character chats’, figuring out motivations for each key moment in the show before then building it into scenes, blocking, and finally cohesive arcs. In a show as large as ‘Into the Woods’, with a massive twenty principal cast members, it seemed to me a crucial choice to make sure there were no weak links, for a production this large, you want to avoid hanging it on a specific individual. Toby emphasised that it was this which made the world feel so compelling, “I don’t want the audience to go away from the show and go (…) ‘well, that person was fantastic, and that one person was fantastic.’ I want them to go away and go, Wow, that was a complete world (…) Everyone was so in it.’

This is not Toby’s first Cambridge production, having previously directed ‘Faustus’ last year. When I asked him who his role models were, he told me that Nicolas Hytner, who currently has his own adaptation of ‘Into the Woods’ playing in London, is a key inspiration. Toby explains that Hytner has a “great understanding of how to get people to give it their all, and that’s what directing’s all about.”

I asked him how he achieved the same thing in his own rehearsal space, and he told me, for him, it was all about confident, kind leadership. ‘The more you can show people that they’re in safe hands, the more willing they are to step out of their shell and have fun (…) What makes a really good show is the sense that everyone has each other’s back.”

It wasn’t just within the rehearsal space that this was key. I probed Toby as to what the most challenging part of directing such a large production was, which he explained was to fully delegate.

“When operating on this scale… My brain is rooted in the sense of, ‘Oh, I can do that, and I have time for that.’ Ultimately, the team of almost ninety crew members learnt to harmonise, just like the ensemble they were working for. It’s about trusting the team (…) learning to sit back and go, ‘we’ve got this’, then it will feel like everyone’s moving forward together, everyone taking these steps to make the show happen.”

He ended on a poignant note: “That’s what the magic of theatre is, everyone all working together for the same show to get the audience to smile… that’s, to me, what it’s all about.”

You can watch ‘Into the Woods’ at the ADC theatre from the 18th-28th of March 2026.