The Diablo Valley College Drama department will start its season off with the Tony Award-winning musical “Into the Woods,” featuring a book by James Lapine, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

The play will send you into childhood fairytale flashbacks, but with some special twists. More than a few of these tales are told simultaneously as one narrative. A baker and his wife wish to have a child, while Cinderella wishes to attend the king’s ball and Red Riding Hood visits her grandmother. Other characters including Rapunzel, Jack from “Jack and the Beanstalk” and Snow White make appearances. As the story unfolds and conflicts begin to thicken, the phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ will cross your mind.

Since the show first opened in 1986, there have been hundreds of interpretations of this classic. Each director has the choice to stay relatively true to the original version, or you know, not. “Into the Woods” was also adapted into a movie just last December. Despite the tendency of other directors to stray away from the story line, DVC Drama director, Lisa Drummond has chosen to stay close to the original version in this production.

“I saw the musical for the very first time when I was living in England and I fell in love with it,” said Drummond, “I really really wanted to just do a traditional version of Into the Woods, really going back to the idea of the books that these characters came from and the idea that they were stories of children and the morals of those stories.”

The musical will be about two hours long, full of live singing, which the actors have been rehearsing since September. A 14 piece orchestra playing the songs, primarily composed of DVC students.

Of the 122 people who auditioned for Into the Woods, only 18 made it on to the stage. Drummond said that everyone in the cast had some sort of a musical background, whether they came from a choral or theater base. It was just up to Drummond and the show’s musical director, Enrico Banson, to blend everybody’s talents together to create a cohesive show.

Scottie Masao Tsubota, who plays Jack, posted to the drama department’s official Facebook page “‘Into the Woods’ is an adventure with fun characters and great lessons about the chances we make, it is a must-see!”

The show opens on Oct. 23 and runs through Nov. 8. Buy your tickets on dvcdrama.net or call the ticket office at 925-969-2358.