Into the Hoods was A-mazing! Totally enjoyed tonight’s performance and I couldn’t have asked for a better partner in crime to go see it than Mirela who was grooving in her seat (I’m sure she would have jumped up on stage to join in given a chane) all night. Into the Hoods is a very smartly written urban version of the Stephen Sondheim Broadway hit Into the Woods which basically combined several fairy tales to form one story. Into the Hoods, instead of the usual fairy-tale background, brings you to the tower blocks of the Ruff Endz estate following a couple of kids who somehow end up at the blocks after running away from school and who must complete several tasks to earn their bus fare home. There they encounter: The Landlord, his Daughter Rap-on-Zel, Spinderalla (DJ wanna-be), The Prince, in the Basement – Jaxx (very funny!) and The Giant, Lil Red and Wolf (manager wanna-be who exploits Lil Red’s talents.)

The show starts with a poet who was surprisingly spontaneous even though I’m sure he says the same thing night after night. I was expecting this to be quite boring but his poem on ‘hoods was brilliant and takes you beyond what you would understand a hood to be – manhood, childhood, knighthood, priesthood etc. and sets the scene for the rest of the night.

What follows the poetry is an amazing display of hip hop dancing. I was truly impressed with how the performances really managed to incorporate the story into each act – it wasn’t just a case of here’s the story, and here’s some dancing on the side. It all integrated well together. As for the skillz – wow! The artists were so explosive with so much energy not to mention that they were fiiii-iiiiit! This was not only in terms of doing the very vigorous dancing for more than 90 minutes (and keeping it up) but also in terms of being very cut body-wise. Mmmm … very very nice abs and arms! A surprise for the night was the little kid who played Fairy G (Spinderalla’s fairy “god mother”). We couldn’t tell if she was a little person, a kid or a little kid considering she was half the size of the other two children who must have been less than 10 years old themselves – but she was very cool – from the attitude to the dance moves. Just fab.

Aside from the dancing Into the Hoods also delivers a fantastic sound-track combinining modern hip-hop and R&B with old-style funk, soul, dance and disco. The set was quite simplistic but they made great use of the space including innovative use of the video screen to project the image of the tower block and its many many floors plus the magic of having artists coming down a giant imaginary staircase to emerge in reality.

Absolutely infectious energy – so much so that I became a fan on facebook and Mirela is still practising her hip-hop moves even now – hours after the close of the show! Would definitely recommend Into the Hoods for fans of hip-hop music and dance.