Director Caroline Hutchison said despite the show being based on fairytale characters, it was anything but a fairytale.
The Emmy award-winning musical, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, intertwines the stories of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood and others to tell a universal story about the human condition, Ms Hutchison said.
"There's been a lot of people saying it's all about fairytales. It's not actually coming to watch a fairytale at all.
"He's used the classic characters . . . to [say] watch out for what you wish for. Wishes can come true and when they do, is it what you really wanted in the first place? Happily ever after . . . but at what cost?
"It's very humorous, but it's very moving. It's about loss . . . tragedies happen, great things happen; there's infidelity, marriage . . . and it all happens in the woods."
Ms Hutchison said it was a show the audience could just sit back and enjoy, or one they could get into on a deeper level, thanks to the layers of the story.
The 15-member cast, which was entirely local, was headed by the two main characters, Nick Hughes and Charlotte Graf as the Butcher and the Butcher's Wife.
With plenty of young blood coming through - the youngest being 15-year-old Wakatipu High School pupil Emma Burns - the future looks good for productions and the theatre scene in the resort.
The stunning costumes for Into The Woods have been designed and made by Kay Turner, while the spectacular sets are the brainchild of Ken Turner.
Ms Hutchison said the musical would be backed by a five-piece live orchestra of piano, cello, violin, flute and trumpet.
The audience, encouraged to dress in a "glamour/fairytale" manner, would be seated around the stage at Arrowtown's Athenaeum Hall.
"It's a big Broadway production but we're doing it in a very intimate way," she said.
"We love using the Arrowtown Hall. It's just a nice community out there."
Ms Hutchison hoped the season would be as successful as previous shows - Hair, Cabaret and most recently the sell-out season of Flagons and Foxtrots.
"The Good Value Productions brand, as it were, is now out there.
"I think people remember Hair in the Queenstown Gardens and Cabaret . . . and Flagons and Foxtrots and they know what they can expect from us."
The 10-night season of Into The Woods begins on Wednesday and finishes on September 6.
Shows begin at 8pm from Tuesdays to Saturdays, with a 6pm show on Sundays and no performance on Mondays.
Tickets cost $38 and can be bought from either The Bungy Shop, ph 442-8456, or Lakes District Museum, ph 442-1824.
