Into the Woods
OPENING: November 5, 1987
CLOSING: September 3, 1989
Seen: October 1988
LOCATION: Martin Beck Theater
Remakes, am I right?
I think we can all agree that there is one thing that those with money fear. Ironically, I think it’s also what we, as consumers of entertainment, most crave but will never admit to. What is this craw in our side, you may ask?
Originality.
Think about it – how many Marvel movies are out there? How many film versions of Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, and Romeo and Juliet are there? Annie premiered on Broadway in 1977, and in those forty seven years there have been four filmed versions of it.
This fear of the unknown is not new. Stories have been retold and rebranded throughout history. Namely, through fairy tales. So it was bound to happen eventually that some fairy tale musical would end up on Broadway. And as it turns out, the creative team that got it there was Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. Today, it is arguably one of the most influential post-Golden Age musicals in existence. It’s none other than Into the Woods.
In 1984, Sondheim and Lapine found success with their musical Sunday in the Park with George. With a cast led by Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin, this offbeat historical musical was nominated for a whopping 10 Tonys. They won two, Lighting and Scenic Design.
Naturally, following that success, they wanted to try again.
As they were spitballing ideas, it became obvious that both Sondheim and Lapine had career aspirations they wanted to achieve at some point. Lapine wanted to do something with fairy tales – proving my previous point that the familiar will usually win – and Sondheim wanted something with a quest.
Call me crazy, but that sounds like a perfect matchup to me.
But if you haven’t seen Into the Woods – there is one very important fact about Sondheim that must not be overlooked: all of his work is somewhat original. It became clear early in the writing process that this story could not be a full musical just follow one classic fairy tale; there simply wasn’t enough there if they wanted to stay true to the source material. So Lapine did something that is very common today, but was not so common in the mid-1980s: he mashed a bunch of them together.
But when the first public performance debuted in June of 1986 at Playwright’s Horizons, it became clear that there needed to be an original fairy tale written to tie the whole thing together. And it was from here that the two leads as we now know them, The Baker and his wife, were written in.
The Baker and His Wife are a couple who want nothing more than a child, but who find out during the (Very long) opening number that they are cursed to not have one. Their neighbor, the witch, has cursed the family in retaliation for the Baker’s father stealing her precious beans that in turn have cursed her since they left the garden. In a rage and in payment for stealing vegetables in general, the witch stole the baby and has raised it as her own – a baby girl named Rapunzel. Now, the witch is looking to lift her own curse – and it will require a potion that needs a lock of very blond hair, a red cape, a golden slipper, and a white cow.
For those of you who don’t know the plot, I think you have an idea of where this is going.
This theme of family rings true through the entire show. Without giving away any spoilers, families begin to fall apart in various ways in Act II, leading to a gorgeous ballad called “No One Is Alone”, in which two adult characters sing to two younger characters, setting up a makeshift family unit in their crisis situation. To hammer the family theme home, the vamp into the rousing finale is a soulful ballad called “Children Will Listen” as the surviving characters limp out of the woods, bonded as a new non-traditional family.
And it seems that the family theme stretched even outside the bounds of the page – Cinderella and her Prince, Kim Crosby and Robert Westenberg, married after they completed their runs.
Unlike Lerner and Lowe, who tried to recreate the magic of My Fair Lady with Camelot and failed miserably – you can read about it in this entry here) The reaction to Into the Woods was immediate and positive. I’m sure that there were many parents who mistakenly assumed that since it was about fairy tales, it was kid-friendly – thirty-six years later, this is still a common mishap – but truthfully, it’s a scarily deep piece of theater. Themes include – but are not limited to – broken families to found families to finding oneself.
And it would have to be – that year at the Tonys, it went up against Phantom of the Opera. And you know what? It held it’s own. In a year where Phantom could easily have swept every category (If Sarah Brightman had been nominated for Best Actress, that is, but that’s a discussion for a different post), Into the Woods was nominated for ten and took home three. Most notably, Joanna Gleason won for Best Actress in a Musical, which many can agree was so very, very deserved.
Into the Woods ran just shy of two years. But in that time, it truly won the hearts of millions. It has had two Broadway revivals and I am proud to say that I saw them both.
And my parents? They didn’t remember seeing this one either. But they also fell into the trap of “It’s about fairy tales!” because they bought me the recorded VHS when I fell in love with Bernadette Peters and were shocked when we got to Act II. In a way, it truly was a family show for all of us, because it was the last show that that they indulged in as a date night in the 80’s – because according to the date on the Playbill – I was on my way.
A Theater Kid indeed.
CAST: REPLACEMENT
NARRATOR: Tom Aldredge
CINDERELLA: Kim Crosby
JACK: BEN WRIGHT
BAKER: Chip Zien
BAKER’S WIFE: Mary Gordon Murray
CINDERELLA’S STEPMOTHER: Joy Franz
FLORINDA: Kay McClelland
LUCINDA: Lauren Mitchell
JACK’S MOTHER: Barbara Bryne
LITTLE RED RIDINGHOOD: LuAnne Ponce
WITCH: Betsy Joslyn
CINDERELLA’S FATHER: Edmund Lyndeck
CINDERELLA’S MOTHER: Merle Louise
MYSTERIOUS MAN: Tom Aldredge
WOLF: Robert Westenberg
RAPUNZEL: Pamela Winslow
RAPUNZEL’S PRINCE: Dean Butler
GRANDMOTHER: Merle Louise
CINDERELLA’S PRINCE: Robert Westenberg
STEWARD: Philip Hoffman
GIANT: Merle Louise
SNOW WHITE: Heather Shulman
SLEEPING BEAUTY: Maureen Davis
UNDERSTUDIES: Greg Zerkle (Narrator/Mysterious Man, Baker, Cinderella’s Father, Cinderella’s Prince/Wolf, Steward); Jeff Blumenkrantz (Jack, Rapunzel’s Prince, Steward); Jonathan Dokuchitz (Jack, Rapunzel’s Prince); Philip Hoffman (Baker); Chuck Wagner (Cinderella’s Prince/Wolf); Lauren Mitchell (Baker’s Wife); Kay McClelland (Baker’s Wife); Carolyn Marlow (Cinderella’s Stepmother, Witch); Judith Moore (Cinderella’s Stepmother, Witch); Marin Mazzie (Cinderella, Rapunzel); Pamela Winslow (Cinderella, Lucinda/Florinda); Maureen Davis (Rapunzel, Little Red Ridinghood, Snow White); and Heather Shulman (Little Red Ridinghood).
Standby: Edmund Lydeck (Narrator/Mysterious Man).
Flatow, Sheryl. “From the Archives: Into the Woods Is a Cautionary Tale for the ‘80s.” Playbill, November 4, 2022. https://playbill.com/article/from-the-archives-into-the-woods
Gioia, Michael. “Learn How Into the Woods Began, Who Got Married, the Line Sondheim Stole and How the Witch Transformed.” Playbill, June 22nd, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150626134312/http://www.playbill.com/news/article/learn-how-into-the-woods-began-who-got-married-the-line-sondheim-stole-and-how-the-witch-transformed-351830
Internet Broadway Database. “Into the Woods”. Accessed September 2024. https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/into-the-woods-4486
Tony Awards. “Nominees.” TonyAwards.Com. Accessed October 2024. https://www.tonyawards.com/nominees/year/1988/category/any/show/any/
