Olivier Winner Aideen Malone Lights Sondheim's Woods in West End

Olivier Award-winning lighting designer Aideen Malone calls the West End transfer of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods "one of the most unfinished pieces I have ever done." The production has moved from London's Bridge theatre to the West End, and audiences keep coming.

"There was a lot of detail we never got a chance to finish," Malone said. "We ran out of time – big time!"

The judges of the Olivier Awards disagreed with her verdict. So did the public. The show's forest shimmers in a weave of powdery, gleaming branches, with light angling through the trees as Cinderella, Red Riding Hood and other fairytale figures bounce into the woods.

"This is a stunning piece, but it's a monster," Malone declared. "There was a lot of problem-solving."

How does the lighting track the story?

The design maps time itself. "It's about the passing of time, day and night," Malone explained. "The woods are very luscious and inviting initially, and then become darker and more mysterious."

As characters stumble beyond their happy-ever-afters, the design signposts the journey. Arcadia collapses into "destruction and wasteland" when they return from the first quest.

Malone uncages a full spectrum of smoke and haze for the show's series of smoke-and-mirror surprises. "A fog that's quite dense but rises, and then a cool fog that stays low on the ground," she described. Light pierces the layers at moments of epiphany — Red Riding Hood plucked from the wolf's belly, Jack dismounting the beanstalk.

She names her collaborators: Jordan Fein (director), Tom Scutt (set) and Roland Horvath (video). "It's a great team effort," she insisted. Malone previously lit Scutt's wheat fields in their Olivier-winning Fiddler on the Roof.

How did Malone find lighting?

"Was I a little theatre kid?" she considered. "Not really."

A Dublin pantomime at an impressionable age marked a turning point. At her all-girls secondary school, annual musicals cast the tall Malone as swaggering blokes in Oklahoma! and The King and I. Degrees at Dublin Trinity and Goldsmiths in London covered backstage roles too.

"I fell upon lighting, and was definitely more comfortable with not being on the stage, collaborating with the whole team," she said. "I haven't looked back since."

Her career began on the fringe and in dance. She toured with choreographer Akram Khan, enjoying how dance let her "play with beautiful bodies in space. It's very sculptural."

Who are her key creative partners?

Not all directors understand lighting. "Some are very visual, and some aren't," she grinned, declining to name names. She prefers "somebody with nerves of steel who is prepared to try stuff" — like Sally Cookson, with whom she devised Jane Eyre and A Monster Calls. Their 2016 Peter Pan at the National was touch and go. "But we always get there for press night."

The pandemic prompted a long-contemplated master's in light and lighting at University College London. "I thought I knew a lot about colour," Malone said, "but I learned so much about the detail of a light source, which makes a huge difference when you're lighting skin tones." One performer needs 1% more magenta, another 1% less — a daily challenge.

She cites the Open Air theatre in Regent's Park, where she and Scutt designed Carousel and Fiddler, among her favourite venues. Her portfolio also blends architectural and theatrical work, including Sadler's Wells East, which opened last year; a neon sign above its entrance reads "You are welcome," and her lighting sustains that welcome from morning to night.

Theatre still holds her. "You have a work light on and the space looks flat – then you put a spotlight on and it's transformed. It's a bit of magic."

With Into the Woods now playing in the West End, that magic — unfinished or not — reaches its largest audience yet.