THEATRE'S history is littered with stories of a starlet being plucked from the chorus line.

Imagine, then, a production where everyone steps out of the chorus into a solo role, as is the case in the first major collaboration between two Leeds artistic powerhouses, Opera North and the West Yorkshire Playhouse, for the 2016 Yorkshire Festival.

Into the spotlight and Into The Woods go Opera North's chorus for a typically challenging, ingenious Stephen Sondheim morality tale, the one that carries the warning Be Careful What You Wish For. The one, too, where the cast may have a feeling of Happy Ever After in their promotion to their Warholian 15 minutes, but Sondheim is avowedly against the fairytale world having its usual joyous summation.

York Press:

Claire Pascoe as the Witch in Into The Woods. Picture: Manuel Harlan

Playhouse artistic director James Brining and designer Colin Richmond begin in a classroom on World Fairytale Day, when a teacher/narrator (Nicholas Butterfield) guides his primary school charges into a story world now beyond their bedtime and nine o'clock watershed, as familiar Grimm, Perrault, Disney and pantomime favourites are bent into unfamiliar, darker new shapes with anarchic wit and glee.

The first half spins around a barren Baker's wife (Louise Collett) and Baker (Dean Robinson) desperately craving a bun in the oven and doing anything to achieve it under the cruel spell of Claire Pascoe's outstanding Witch, as they meddle in the stories of Cinderella, Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood.

The lightness exemplified by the preening Rapunzel's Prince (Warren Gillespie) and Cinderella's Prince (Ross McInroy) makes way for a heavier-footed second act as the Giant's wife seeks revenge. Sondheim's beans still work their magic, however, as the darkness descends, while Brining, Richmond and musical director Jim Holmes pull the strings most pleasingly and teasingly.

Into The Woods runs at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until June 25. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or wyp.org.uk