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After the solemn character study "Evita" comes the infectiously fun morality play "Into the Woods," continuing on the stage of the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse in Owasco through July 25.

Where The Rev's last show featured one larger-than-life performance at its center, the company's latest features a large ensemble of down-to-earth characters. Where the stage was barren, now it's overgrown. Where "Evita" was cold, "Into the Woods" is as warm as the sunbeam that finds its way through the canopy.

Still, Stephen Sondheim's classic is a perfect follow-up to Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's own not only because it's such a departure point — but because it's just a better show.

Playing the Baker and Baker's Wife at the heart of the story are familiar Rev faces Aaron Galligan-Stierle ("Parade") and Lindsay Nicole Chambers ("Loch Ness"). After their characters are tasked with stealing items from Brothers Grimm tales so they can conceive a child, the performers careen ever so skillfully between every hopeful, desperate and bemused moment their curious quest entails. 

The character who assigned the husband and wife that quest, the Witch, is portrayed with amazing presence and comedic timing by veteran film, TV and Broadway performer Vicki Lewis.

Populating the Brothers Grimm mashup quest are Caelie Scott Flanagan as a charming Cinderella, Kendyl Ito as a feisty and hilariously blunt Little Red Riding Hood, and Dexter Conlin as a Jack (of beanstalk fame) with an honest soul but just enough mischievousness to set the musical's giant-sized tragedies in motion.

Fantastic support comes from Christopher Carl as the narrator and mysterious forest vagrant, Jodi Bluestein as the ululating Rapunzel, Joanne Baum as Jack's perpetually shrieking mother, Shane Donovan and CJ Eldred as the pair of himbo princes and Lilli Komurek, Mel Mehrabian and Crystal Sha'nae as Cinderella's hyperbolically cruel — and eventual comic relief — stepsisters and stepmother.

Though light on the showier dancing of "Evita," "Into the Woods" uses its limited choreography to memorable effect. The characters huddling together to sing the prologue of each act makes them the musical highlights of a show thick with pristine numbers like "Stay With Me" by Lewis' Witch and Bluestein's Rapunzel, "Any Moment" by Flanagan's Cinderella and Chambers' Wife, and many more.

That's partly because the prologues cheerily set the stage for the show to subvert the tales on which it's based, all while telling its own about personal responsibility and our relationships with our children.

But the prologues are also so memorable because they're when the curtain rises on the woods themselves, a seemingly infinite portal of twigs, branches and trunks rendered by scenic designers Milo Bue and Jeffrey Kmiec. Director Brett Smock directs the cast into, through and atop the trees, somehow bringing them further to life.

Somehow, too, the cast of this basically flawless production stands even taller.