You’ve never seen a cow like Milky White before.

A pivotal story element in the musical “Into the Woods,” the bovine companion to Jack (of beanstalk fame) has been personified as a prop, played by an actor and everything in between since the show premiered on Broadway in 1987. In the touring production of director Lear deBessonet’s 2002 New York City Center Encores staging, which comes to the Curran Theatre this month, the cow gets new life as an intricately rendered puppet created by theater artist James Ortiz.

Although Milky White is more expressionistic than realistic with her protruding cardboard ribcage, crumbled paper face over malleable foam and comically swinging udders, there’s a remarkably sympathetic quality. She moves, she moos, she even emotes with a furrow of her brow.

“In one of our Zooms, Lear asked, ‘Can the cow make a face like this?’ and she made this little sad puppy dog face on the camera,’ ” Ortiz recalled. “With that, I knew we had a sense of the aesthetic of the show.”

The belovedStephen Sondheimmusical, with book and original direction by James Lapine, tells the story of a baker and his wife who long for a child. Their quest to remove a witch’s curse of infertility causes them to intersect with various fairytale characters.

This production, nominated for six Tony Awards this year (including Best Revival of a Musical), is a less ornate take on the fairytale subject matter than the original French-inspired production, with its settings by Tony Straiges and costumes by Ann Hould-Ward. The design concept for the latest iteration, which runs in San Francisco from June 20-25, is less pristine Charles Perrault in its style and more darkly Germanic Brothers Grimm.

In addition to Ortiz’s puppets — birds made from pages of poetry, a pair of giant’s boots and an enormous set of creepy witch’s hands — moody, almost surreal sets by David Rockwell and dramatically decluttered costumes by Andrea Hood help create the mysterious fairytale world.

The musical has been revisited on Broadway, most recently in 2002, staged multiple times in London and immortalized in the 2014 Disney film directed by Rob Marshall, so each of the key aesthetic collaborators in this new production were already familiar with the material. In fact, Ortiz, who grew up in Texas, noted that “Into the Woods” was the first live theater performance he saw as a child. That knowledge proved vital in working with the notoriously quick turnarounds of Encore productions. Doing in weeks what is usually done in months, it gave them a freedom from overthinking or becoming too precious about any design through necessity.

“On that timetable, your first instinct is usually your best,” said Ortiz. “It helps that I knew the show like the back of my hand.”

Platforms, a staircase and runway make up the central architecture created by Rockwell, with M.C. Escher-like floating buildings intended to help differentiate locations in the story such as the Baker’s house and Cinderella’s Castle.

“I wanted the space to be open and suggestive, rather than specific,” explained Rockwell. “But the fragments we did have onstage had to have dimension and texture without feeling diagrammatic or cartoonish.”

As for the title woods, a series of birch trees made from industrial tubing split in half then etched with bark-like patterns that allow the light to shine through, become a central set the characters navigate. A moon rising over the woods is another element pivotal both to the story and Rockwell’s vision, with the moon growing dramatically larger and more important in Act Two,” he said.

Hood’s costume designs may have pared back some of the flourishes of early productions, but they’re still rich in detail.The Baker’s apron, for instance, is made from a flour sack like people wore during the Great Depression based on real photos of the period. For characters like Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, she looked to the illustrations of Beatrix Potter.

“Potter would often have one key garment, or a key color for a design in an animal, whether it was a rabbit or mice,” said Hood. “I approached it so everyone would get one iconic piece or vivid color, so every character would be equal visually.”

在脚本中, the Witch requires two distinct looks. Her Act One costume is built around a crushed velvet cape, which becomes important to the Witch’s transformation, conveyed by her costume change into a body-conscious, evening-wear pantsuit she wears for the rest of the show. The pants themselves, hand-painted by Hood with a cellular pattern, were a last-minute change after the original skirt proved too difficult to move in.

“I’ve never seen a pantsuit get an ovation before,” said Hood of the reveal. “She comes stomping out and she looked like Wonder Woman.”

While providing their own twist to the production, the artists never wanted their work to distract from the music. “When you have Stephen Sondheim’s music, I think the most important thing that you can do is not get in the way of the clarity of it,” said Hood.

All three artists also said they felt a special responsibility since theirs is the first “Into the Woods” production since the death of Sondheim in 2021. This show is dedicated to his memory.

“Theater is a communal art form and it doesn’t last forever. It’s only alive for the time people are in that theater together,” said Rockwell. “Given the loss of Sondheim and the power of the material, I think in this production, images like the moon setting behind the steps are an even more poignant partner to the music and the story.”

Reach Tony Bravo:tbravo@sfchronicle.com