Emily Blunt as the Baker’s wife going it alone …
The way is dark
The light is dim
But now there’s you, her and him.
The chances look small,
The choices look grim,
But everything you learn there
Will help you when you return there.
— from the Choral Into the Woods
Dear friends and readers,
Jim loved Sondheim’s musicals, and I’ve just spent an hour or so perusing my and Yvette’s Christmas gift to him one year, the tall beautifully bound, Look, I made a Hat! (covering the years 1981-2011),
most of which is by Stephen Sondheim, and contains full and partial accounts of many musicals (not all produced, some just in the idea stage, some extant just as a coupe of songs, a costume design), but for Into the Woods enough of the dialogues, most of the songs, and thinking and ideas behind the stage productions to enable the reader to re-enjoy and understand what he or she has just seen and heard.
Of Into the Woods Sondheim begins by writing that the first act is farce and the second tragedy. As many people know by now, the matter consists of at least 6 folk and fairy tale figures conceived as ordinary people who (like Six Characters in Search of an Author) must enact quests, all of which require them to go into the woods where they collide with one another, and do not exactly live happily ever after by the end. Many may not know Sondheim and James Lapine also saw the characters as “first achieving their goals, and then dealing with the consequences of what they did there.”
They did not follow Bettelheim’s Uses of Enchantment: Sondheim says this book is cited as their source by many people because it’s so well-known. Sondheim seems to dislike Bettelheim’s book and refers to Bettelheim’s terrible behavior at his aslyum. He says what James (who wrote the book) was interested in: “the little dishonesties that enabled the characters to reach their happy endings;” he was “sceptical about the possibility of ‘happy ever after'” (so could not be a Bettelheim person as Bettelheim justified the cruelty of the tales by the happy endings, which he insisted children believed in).
James’s play, Twelve Dreams, shows he was drawn to Carl Jung; they talked to a Jungian psychiatrist; learnt all the tales they chose were known in versions virtually around the world. The exception is “Jack and the Beanstalk” which seems to be a British Isles folk tale. Sondheim much preferred Grimm versions to those of Perrault (and says Disney and US school vesions come from the French). The gimmick was to mash the tales together. Sondheim gives Lapine credit for the elegance of the interweave. They ended up giving 3 midnights for the Baker and his wife to supply the witch’s demands before she’d give them a child:
The cow as white as milk,
The cape as red as blood.
The hair as yellow as corn —
The slipper as pure as gold.
As to himself (he writes the lyrics and music, the core of all opera), he sees the result as a musical about parents and children, about their relationships. Songs are about the experience of learning and gently ironic about what’s learnt. Sondheim remarks that the Baker and his wife are a contemporary urban couple trying to survive and to have a baby. What remains in my memory from Disney’s version is the Baker’s wife seeing Rapunzel’s hair rushing madly to the tower to wrest it, climb up and scissor it off. So Disney captures a current US obsession one finds in married women (they must become mothers).
The photos chosen are from a 2011 production done in Regent’s Park, London. The pages include sample scores, and handwritten notes and songs first written out in fairish copies reproduced. One of the photos is so large but scrumptious because of the park setting; the witch’s outfit is superb. There were no children in any of the parts; adults give the roles more depth.
“Our Little World:” Rapunzel and her mother-witch clinging and rocking
Onto this year’s Disney movie: I didn’t need to read the the songs and dialogues and outline to recognize that Sondheim and Lapine’s stage play had been changed well beyond the needs of a film. the movie is directed by Rob Marshall, and the credits for writing are to James Lapine. There is a name given to someone else for the screenplay on the film credits, but it does not appear on IMDB. So like a translator a central person responsible for the movie is not named — perhaps he worked his screenplay from Lapine’s to Disneyfy it, and then they collaborated?
When we got out of the theater, Yvette recounted to me all the many literal large literal changes: while on stage and in the movie the baker’s wife (Emily Blunt) and Jack’s mother both die, in the movie Rapunzel (Macknzie Mauzy) does not kill herself after having a nervous breakdown from those years in the tower, but rather has a short episode of PTSD and is rescued by one of the princes.
The Disney film Rapunzel is at least not altogether well
In the movie the evil witch (Meryl Streep) self-destructs rather spectacularly; in the play she lives on. Each of the changes has the effect of making for more (however serendipitious) justice and less misery. The play is further disneyfied by an over-production that overpowers, prettifies, drowns out the striking moments of exceptional embodiments of some of the characters (e.g., Johnny Depp as the wolf capering into nothingness) and the singing and acting of the lyrics smooths out to make neutral witty lyrics that mock heterosexual romance.
Promotional still of Johnny Depp as the wolf, and Lilla Crawford as Little Red
As I watched the movie reminded me of our last year’s time with the Disney Saving Mr Banks: two child stars at the center; the anguish of frustrated husband-hero (here the Baker, James Corden, last year Mr Banks).
At Regent’s Park an adult actor played Jack
There was not one seat unfilled in the auditorium (and yet the movie was playing on two screens) of this house meant for a mass audience I don’t usually sit among so the laughter at inanities further got in the way, not to omit an opening nerve-wracking full half-hour of tremendously noisy, flashing trailers for action-adventure fantasies and crude teenage sequels.
Nonetheless, not all disquiet could be removed, and this masterpiece retains some of its power and intense vivacity: by the middle of the second hour, I was sufficiently intensely engaged that I was surprised by grief when Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) burst into the song lyrics of “No one is alone:”
Sometimes people leave you
Halfway through the wood
Others may deceive you.
You decide what’s good.
You decide alone.
But no one is alone …
Cinderella to the Baker (in original version sung to Little Red who suddenly misses her grandmother)
Jim has left us halfway through the wood. At the moment of that song, of the plangent music, I was reminded of how strangely filled with his absence the world everywhere now is, the very air I see registers he’d not there by its color, wherever I go I wish what even this fairy tale wouldn’t grant, wipe away death, the past year and one half and return to the comfort of his presence. He would not have liked this movie adaptation but would have gone for the sake of the day’s togetherness.
I began to cry and Yvette & I held hands. She felt and knew too. This is not the only passionate adult number. There’s the witch’s sudden appeal to Rapunzel, “Stay with me:” “Don’t you know what’s out there in the world? … Stay at home … Who out there could love you more than I? …
Stay with me
The world is dark and wild
Stay a child while you can be a child …
Or the “Agony” of the two princes (Cinderella’s and Rapunzel’s, Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen). What can have caused this “disdain”? or her vanishing? Not every thing in life revolves around love and human need for company. Jack’s mother (Tracey Ullman) worries about starving; Jack (Daniel Hutttlestone) is attached to his cow:
Jack is fonder of the cow than his mother
The “indecisive” Cinderella (the wittiest moment of the whole experience) does not trust to anyone, “The skies are strange/The winds are strong.”
She realizes her dress and shoes are stuck in sticky-pitch the prince has laid across the steps to halt her nightly flights
Even the plucky Little Red is not unflappable. Indeed the the sky’s air is filled with a fearful giant who stands for whatever you want. Sondheim’s characteristic staccato rhythms keep interrupting with aphoristic fragments that linger in the mind: “how do you say to a child who’s in flight./Don’t slip away and I won’t hold so tight.” “Children will listen,” and the lyrics from the musical’s secondary big and repeating number, are justly famous:
Careful the spell you cast,
Not just on children.
Sometimes the spell may last
Past what you can see
And turn against you.
The five characters left to leave the wood and live together at the close: Baker, new baby, Cinderella (who doesn’t mind some cleaning she suddenly says), Jack and Little Red
There is much sheer situation comedy too: the vexed characters argue at cross-purposes, accusing one another of being at fault.
The Baker attempts to reason Little Red into giving up her red cloak
As to romance, it seems Chris Pine is a new heart-throb (Disney people know what they are doing when they cast roles):
It’s significant to note that there is not one African-American actor on the screen who is visible — except perhaps fleetingly in non-speaking walk-on roles.
I thought Disney ruined Streep’s ability to perform when her aging face was transformed into a youthful mask of such thick wrinkle-free flesh it was clear they didn’t want anyone to identify her as a 50+ year old woman who has some realities of aging. Can’t have that. Of all the performers she seemed least able to overcome the Disneyfying all around her. Maybe she was trying too hard.
Still, especially if you’ve never seen the musical before, or haven’t seen it for a long time (my case), I recommend going, perhaps on off-hours and with a determined attempt to come in just as the actual movie is starting (avoiding attached trailers).
Like so many people in my area (and as far as I could see from the TV news across the US), Christmas day has become a day to go to a movie. The parking lot of our local huge 12 screen movie-house was filled by the time Yvette and I left at 3:30 pm.” Two movies were sold out: The Imitation Game (I do mean to go by myself next week) and Unbroken. If the holiday is still centered in the family, the family no longer spends the whole day home together. Probably wise. Hard to say how many do this as the roads were fairly empty. The streets quiet. I like the quiet of the streets, few people about, later in the day in pairs or little groups or alone, walking with pets.
It may be becoming commoner to do “a Jewish Christmas:” She and I went to an Chinese restaurant I remember going to nearly 30 years ago (not on Christmas), a small one which has Peking duck and well-cooked other dishes at a reasonable price; and while we didn’t need a reservation, by the time we left (after 5 pm) there was a 20 minute wait for a table. We enjoyed talking of the movie afterwards: Yvette has a good memory and regaled me with the details of a production she said she, I and Jim had seen some years ago at Mason University and we talked of the individual actors’ careers and performances.
In the evening my cousin just my age (woman, like me, many years married) phoned me and I was good hour on the phone with her catching up. A planned tentative Boxing Day with my other daughter, Caroline, at the National Gallery (the museums in DC on the day after Christmas are most of them open and crowded with shows mounted for just this holiday time) did not come off today. Among other things, I had the time wrong: Georgian Cinema begins January 12th. But the place will have this unusual early film exhibit, which I will go to in a couple of weeks.
I will ever remember the summer the Kennedy Center allowed Eric Schaeffer to take over the place with his direction of some 8 Sondheim musicals. How Jim, I and Yvette went to 6 (at a high price). How at the end of the summer, the day of the last performance of A Little Night Music (the last of all the performances), there were acts going on all over the building, some seemed spontaneous. How Jim loved best Passion and A Little Night Music and Merrily We Roll Along (not enough well known, a bitterer one about the cost of a successful career whose gimmick is to tell the story backwards). Jim nonetheless wanted to see them all and if any came into our area, or we were in any place where one was showing, he’d choose it as one of the theatrical events we’d go to.
As I read the book last night I found myself regretting I had not sat down and read it with him, nor the one I bought him the year later for Christmas, Finishing the Hat (covering the years 195-1981),
more and earlier musicals told of, younger photos of him, with an essay on Rhyme and Its Reasons, which I will today.
I regret all the time I spent at my computer, on the Net, and not with him. I feel an irony in that I deluded myself I had company, made myself not so alone by my time here; well here I am condemned to do it for life, or until I can’t any more when I’m too old. Like some fairy tale.
Once in a while he’d say “you don’t pay attention to me,” half-teasing. I have to tell myself if he had wanted me to spend more time with him, he’d have asked for it and because he had a way of putting things that compelled my immediate assent if the utterance was serious, I would have. Sometimes I think he didn’t want me all that close. Anyway that’s what I tell myself (the little dishonesties the characters tell themselves in the tales) in this great absence I must live with everywhere and all the time.
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
Very helpful review of Into the Woods. I have seen the stage version, but it’s good to be made aware of the changes. I will see the film sooner or later. Your last thoughts about Jim…spot on. It was clear he loved you very much and, yes, he would have pulled you away from the book, the computer, etc. when he wanted to. Carry on. Just saw a cardinal .. .must be a sign, a good one.
Judy Shoaf:
This musical has been a favorite of mine and my daughter’s for a long time–maybe for two decades? I taped the stage version off TV and she wore the tape out, then was involved in a high-school production. She was more critical of the film than I–I loved it, but she was upset at some omissions and brightenings. But as I have been digesting it, it occurred to me that Into the Woods is really a musical meditation on the theme of Philip Larkin’s “This be the verse”–not one of my favorite poems, but one I find myself citing a lot as I and my children and their partners deal with generational issues.
Yes indeed but those are hard verses. Jim liked Larkin very much too:
Here they are:
This be the verse:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
about a minute ago · Like
There is compassion in the poem for everyone — as there is in the musical.
Judy: ” “Yes. The musical gives hope as well as compassion.”
John W: “Thanks for that post, Ellen–“Into the Woods” was my first Sondheim, and though it’s not my favorite (that plum goes to Sweeney Todd), it’s afine one. I saw it with Joanna Gleason and Bernadette Peters, and they were both remarkable. (Peters gets her due credit, but Gleason was superb as well.)
It’s a tart confection, and the tragedy of Act II can be almost Brechtian in denying the audience’s expectations, so performance is especially critical. Sorry to hear that Streep hasn’t been served well here.”
Judy Loest: “Tks, Ellen, I enjoyed this post, elucidating so many Sondheimian elements w/which I was unfamiliar and sharing the private loss that colors everything. I, too, teared at those lyrics of being abandoned halfway into the wood. It will be 5 yrs in Jan and, for the first time, I can feel a lightness reentering my life. Peace and comfort to you as we move into a new year.
Tyler: “Yes, thanks for the review, Ellen. The film hasn’t come here this week – hopefully next. It is my favorite Sondheim show, although I’ve heard others say all the magic was reviewed and the film is visually very dark. I don’t expect it to be a happy film, though, of course. I don’t even think it really is typical “Disney” material, but Disney has grown up and matured with the rest of us I guess. I’m looking forward to seeing it.
One point in your blog you made surprised me – I always thought Rapunzel
was stepped on by the giant – that her death was accidental – I never thought of it as suicide – I would think instead she would go seeking her prince hoping to be with him.
Tyler
In reply to Tyler and John W,
Several people have said that Into the woods is their favorite Sondheim. I’d say that once again the Disney choice of which Sondheim is unerring — their finger on what is popular is seen here.
I don’t understand what is meant by the word “reviewed.” The magic was “reviewed?” The film is filled with fantasy; it’s fantasy from beginning to end; once the witch appears; the whole of the screen design is faery world.
I did like the film; some people when I write an evaulation don’t seem to understand that — I know you do, Tyler. I’d say it’s not dark; it tries to exclude the ironies in the language of the songs; it’s sentimental and insists on the sense of community among the characters and the emphasis finally is on the survivors; we get the baker learning a “male lesson” when his father appears (Simone Beale thrown away as he is given hardly any nuance in his speech); he must soldier on, hope on, be a good father and family man and our group of 5 heads out of the woods. The stage productions I saw were ironic, the witch carried on for example, no Baker’s father appearance. Yvette and I assumed suicide because Rapunzel was in this state of intense distress and then consigned to (in effect) solitary confinement in a hovel. In the film we do see her in a hovel, looking traumatized, but then when prince charming shows up, she is transformed to joy.
John says his favorite is Sweeney Todd. That was the one Emma Thompson did and was aired this season on PBS. I’ll suggest a third popular favorite is A Funny Thing Happened … Jim, as I said, liked A Little Night Music, Merrily We Roll Along (he identified with the hero) and Passion best. Among his many favorite songs was “Anyone can whistle?” from one of Sondheim’s several failed shows. Which musical do I like most? Probably A Little Night Music; favorite song probably “Day by Day — a long one with many turns (from Company I think — not sure — Company has great songs, a feeble story). Sweeney Todd is exhilarating and I like the nightmarish interpretations (then the young couple don’t fit). Into the Woods is deep and quirky when it’s done right (which after all the Disney film didn’t do). In Look I made a Hat! Sondheim says Broadway shows should be just one act; most of the time the second act is just a repetition. Well speak for yourself; often his are weaker in the second act, so I like Sunday in the Park with George up to the formation of the picture and then think it should stop.
Ellen
“I want to put in a big cheer for Sondheim’s lyrics in West Side Story. Bob
Yes, let’s not forget that Sondheim wrote songs for musicals before he began to make them himself — and in these two books you see he carried on doing them. I love the songs of West Side Story, lyrics and music both.
I think there are many meanings of the word “review,” such as “Another look, one’s own opinion, a professional evaluation, gossip, personal response,” etc. I’m always glad if anyone reads anything I write about whatever it is I’ve seen so my “reviews” are generally written from the POV of “if you read my reviews often you will better be able to gauge whether or not you will find it worth the money to see or go, etc.”
Thank you, Ellen. This was a lovely response. This is one of my favorite musicals, but I haven’t seen this adaptation. Thank you also for pointing out upcoming the NGA exhibit. I will be in DC in February, and will try to see it.
I’d like to say I’m also very fond of Sondheim’s “Follies,” and especially the songs “Losing My Mind” and “I’m Still Here.” Another show that followed “West Side Story” where Sondheim collaborated was “Do I Hear a Waltz” with music by Richard Rodgers – the opening song is fabulous! Tyler
Last night I had a look at Finishing the Hat, and discovered its second long section is about West Side Story (lyrics, notes, outline, thoughts), with similar sections on Gypsy, Do I hear A Waltz?, Company,Follies, Merrily too — and a few other musicals covered individually, much more than Look I made a Hat! (which had individually only Sunday in the Park, Into the Woods, Assassins, Passion), some he didn’t write the music for but was centrally involved. A treasure trove of a book. He says this time it’s a contradiction in terms since much of the material is meant to be said or sun or acted — well that’s the way of screenplays and stage plays too. But since the first book was a hit (he doesn’t say this), here’s another.
I can see both were a labor of love, maybe this more so and it has more photos. I remember Jim reading it — looking at it.
Sondheim’s opening essay.”Rhyme and Its Reasons,” includes a strong defense of “true” or “pure rhyme.” He doesn’t bother defend rhyme or patterned verse (which some modern poets used to in mid-century) but calls a movement away from true or pure rhyme and doing without any or patterns laziness. Also the person can’t do it. True rhyme is where the final syllables sound precisely alike and what is different are the consonants that precede them. He does not care for substitutes like identity (though allows it may have precisely the irony and repetition you want), or versions of “near” (false he calls them) rhymes and he does go over a whole gamut of kinds of rhymes. He says there is nothing wrong in using a rhyming dictionary. It’s a concise refreshing piece, nothing overtly theoretical at all.
This morning I had an experience which reminds me of how I come into contact so frequently with people who have lived in utterly different worlds from me. A woman at the gym asked me about Into the Woods; it was obvious she had never seen any Sondheim, not even this one, seemed not to know at all what it was about. She would go because it was Disney. A woman who reads, looks educated, is middle class in the N.Va area, Jewish.
Ellen
Judy L: “Tks, Ellen, I enjoyed this post, elucidating so many Sondheimian elements w/which I was unfamiliar and sharing the private loss that colors everything. I, too, teared at those lyrics of being abandoned halfway into the wood. It will be 5 yrs in Jan and, for the first time, I can feel a lightness reentering my life. Peace and comfort to you as we move into a new year.”
Thanks for the info, Ellen. I’ve long wanted to read Sondheim’s book. I should I’m such a fan of Broadway musicals. I found interesting what you say about rhyme from Sondheim’s perspective. When I listen to the earlier 20th century musicals, stuff from The Great American Songbook, I am amazed and glory in the alliteration and rhymes – there’s nothing to equal them in the theatre today. Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Lerner & Loewe – they were the masters and still are more than 50 years after the last of their shows hit the stage.
Tyler
Tyler writes: “Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Lerner & Loewe – they were the masters and still are more than 50 years after the last of their shows hit the stage.”
What I’d like to know, Tyler, is how clear was it and is it to most Americans, at least those familiar with Broadway musicals, that, except for Cole Porter, all these figures (as well as Comden & Green and some other notables) were Jewish. I ask because I’m currently writing a paper on American Jewish writers (including lyricists) in the period before 1956. One of my points is that Jews played a significant role in popular American culture (including comedians, comic book writers, screen writers, etc) but were never publicly identified as Jews, partly because many of them anglicized their names, partly because they totally avoided creating Jewish characters or addressing Jewish subjects … Bob
Tyler: Thanks for the info, Ellen. I’ve long wanted to read Sondheim’s book. I should I’m such a fan of Broadway musicals. I found interesting what you say about rhyme from Sondheim’s perspective. When I listen to the earlier 20th century musicals, stuff from The Great American Songbook, am amazed and glory in the alliteration and rhymes – there’s nothing to equal them in the theatre today. Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Lerner & Loewe – they were the masters and still are more than 50 years after the last of their shows hit the stage.
Tyler
Me: I decided late night reading would be the two Sondheim books. I’m not sure Jim did read them through; in his later years he allowed reading on the Net to take up too much of his time. But now I will and thought I’d correct what I wrote earlier: Finishing the Hat was the first published book; then Look I Made A Hat!, so the essay on rhyme and its reasons is the very first piece Sondheim presents as a framing for his work. I’m no musicologist but know that beyond the rhymes and rhythms of his lyrics, as well as their talking English, the staccato rhythms of the music are central to their greatness. The introductory essay to Look I Made a Hat! is a generous explanation of a group of further terms important to his art: amplification; clarity; collaboration, craft, voice, irony, the use of surprise. He does (gently) mock the Andrew Lloyd Webber school of musicals as operettas. Thinking of musicals I’ve liked more recently than the ones Tyler mentions (which I do love) I come up with memories of All That Jazz and a love of Les Miserables. There are small lesser musicals which never become famous (or are not made into movies), one Jim and I saw several years ago at the Folger, a musical from Great Expectations — superb, but I never heard of it again. After all the music and lyrics of West Side Story are truly beyond outstanding.
Ellen
Sondheim does have his own dislikes and peeves. Operetta is a term of abuse with him; he also dislikes Noel Coward’s plays and lyrics. He does not like as not art the musicals of the early part of the century (e.g.. Pal Joey kind of thing, even Showboat does not come up to his ideas of art in the musical); and thinks they improved hugely with the bringing in of firm story (Oklahoma) and psychological complexity (musicals of the 60s) and ironies (70s). He seems to feel in 2010 that live theater and musicals are suffering a lot: going back to mainstream kind of boring dullness; the audiences are not big enough, the cost too high; TV and films and the Internet pulling more and more people away.
Finishing The Hat begins with an essay analogous to the one on rhyme: it’s salutary too. Sondheim denies the lyrics are poetry. He claism they are much looser, have much less density, and are written to be serve musics; often poem do not make good lyrics. On the surface the examples he shows works, but the problem is his own lyrics are dense with meaning, felt thought.
But although he does not say it, I extrapolate his feeling that the use of lyrics in classrooms as poetry is wrong-headed. They are often used as easier to read, and when part of pop culture, appeal to students because fashionable. They are different species maybe.
Ellen
I just wanted to say I saw Into the Woods today and thoroughly enjoyed it, and even with the changes made/songs cut, I thought it worked very well. I was impressed with all the actors and the singing was pretty good (it isn’t always when you have Hollywood stars singing.) One really neat addition I caught which was a nice little tribute was the first mention of Cinderella at the festival, for just a few seconds you could hear the waltz music from the ball scene in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Nice because Sondheim was mentored by Hammerstein, and it made me wonder whether Into the Woods was partly inspired by Hammerstein’s earlier show.
Happy New Year to all!
Tyler
Carol Dorf: “Lovely post. You might want to check the Bernadette Peters version (a recorded Broadway show — I think it is on netflix.)”
Thank you very much. I didn’t know that and would love to see it .
11/27/2021: the day after Sondheim died — I reposted my blog on the listserv and FB and twitter: “Thank you for telling us, Ellen. I hadn’t heard yet. I probably listen to at least one of his songs every day. This is a huge loss for musical theater. There is no one of his stature in my opinion alive today except
maybe Andrew Lloyd Webber. I have recordings of every one of his shows.
He will be missed.
Tyler”
11/27/2021: Catherine: “I was so sad to hear of Steve Sondheim’s death. He was not only a great artist, he was a good and generous man. He did kindnesses for many actors, he was respected in the artistic world, and he was responsive to his fans. Many people who wrote to him got thoughtful, personal letters in return. What a life he lived.”