into the woods

Question 1

Broadway in the 1980s

Answer 1

Soaring production costs
* Increasing number of tourists making up audiences
* Decreasing number of theatres
* The tastes of producers and audiences changed to
megamusicals

more expensive so need to sell more tix

Question 2

Megamusicals

Answer 2

This term was coined in the 1980s when the New York
Times used it to describe a kind of multimillion-dollar
show that had risen to prominence that decade with The
Phantom of the Opera and others. Megamusical is
analogous to the film industry term blockbuster
* Similar labels:
* “Spectacle show”
* “Disney musical”
* “Movical”
* “McMusical”

Question 3

Characteristics of megamusicals

Answer 3

Foreign roots
* UK: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Phantom
* France: Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil, Les Mis
* Plots are large in scope
* Little or no spoken dialogue (called “through-sung”)
* Impressive, complicated, expensive sets and staging
* Elaborate lighting designs and special effects
The producer carries the most influence over the
production
* Aggressive marketing campaigns
* Long performance runs
* Universal/global appeal
* Financially successful
* Poor reception from critics
* Largely ignored by academics

Question 4

Examples of megamusicals

Answer 4

• Cats
• Phantom of the Opera
• Les Misérables
• Miss Saigon
• Lion King
• Wicked
• Hamilton

Question 5

Stephen Sondheim role in into the woods

Answer 5

Composer and lyricist
* Mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II
* Studied music at Williams College, a
small liberal arts college in
Massachusetts
* After graduating, he studied music
composition with Milton Babbitt

he took a long time to find the right partner and then was veru succesful

Sondheim is one of the
most significant
composers and lyricists
of the second half of the
20th century and beyond
* His legacy includes 18
musicals and such
mentees as Jonathan
Larson (Rent), Lin-
Manuel Miranda
(Hamilton), and others

Question 6

Sondheim’s career and selected
output

Answer 6

he was always looking for his bookwriter

he had lots of help from OH2

he mentored others like LMM

1950s-1960s
* Early experiments and success as a lyricist: West Side Story and Gypsy
1970s
* Multiple artistic achievements as a composer-lyricist working with director-
producer Hal Prince: Company, Sweeney Todd
1980s
* Collaborations with bookwriter James Lapine: Sunday in the Park with
George and Into the Woods
1990s-2020s
* Later musicals with Lapine and others: Assassins, Passion

Question 7

James Lapine

Answer 7

American bookwriter, director,
filmmaker, photographer,
visual artist
* Worked with Sondheim on 3
musicals plus the musical
revue, Sondheim on Sondheim
* The first Sondheim-Lapine
collaboration, Sunday in the
Park with George, won the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Their
second musical was Into the
Woods

Question 7

James Lapine

Answer 7

American bookwriter, director,
filmmaker, photographer,
visual artist
* Worked with Sondheim on 3
musicals plus the musical
revue, Sondheim on Sondheim
* The first Sondheim-Lapine
collaboration, Sunday in the
Park with George, won the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Their
second musical was Into the
Woods

Question 8

What is Into the Woods about?

Answer 8

Once upon a time…”
* Fairytales captured Sondheim and
Lapine’s imaginations. They felt that
fairytales, especially those of Brothers
Grimm (publ. in 1807), German
academics who collected and wrote
folklore, were not as benign as they
seem. Many of their stories exhibit
themes of selfishness and greed

Into the Woods intertwines 4 fairytales of the Brothers
Grimm
* “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Little Red Riding Hood,”
“Cinderella,” and “Rapunzel”
* There are also small references to “Snow White” and
“Sleeping Beauty”
* Lapine added one new fairytale
* ”The Baker and His Wife

All the ordinary resolutions of the various stories are achieved at
the end of Act I, at which point we would expect the characters
to live “happily ever after.” But as Sondheim notes:
“In order for [the characters] to get what they wanted, they each
had to cheat a little, or lie a little, or huckster [sell something of
questionable value] a little…So when the second-act curtain goes
up…the story becomes one of how the characters have to band
together and make amends for what they did. Among other
things, the show is about community responsibility…you can’t
just go chop down trees and tease princes and pretend beans are
worth more than they are. Everybody has to pay for that.”

Question 9

Composer-lyricist: into the woods

Answer 9

sondheim

Question 10

Bookwriter and director: into the woods

Answer 10

james lapine

Question 11

Source: into the woods

Answer 11

fairy tales by the brothers grimm

Question 12

New York run into the woods

Answer 12

1987

Question 13

who won the tony

Answer 13

bakers wife

Question 14

Reception into the woods

Answer 14

National tours (1988 and 2023)
* West End (1990 and 1998)
* Broadway revivals (2002, 2022)
* Film (2014), directed by Rob Marshall, who
said:“Into the Woods is a fairy tale for the
21st century post 9/11 generation.
Sondheim and Lapine were way ahead of
their time when they wrote it. The
comforting knowledge that we are not alone
in this unstable world gives us all that
glimmer of hope.” (trailer)
* The dates listed on the slide are for interest

Question 15

Unification devices

Answer 15

Sondheim uses musical themes to link aspects of the
score together
* “I wish”
* Into the Woods starts and ends with the same interval, an
ascending major second (do-re) setting these two words. It is
heard elsewhere too. That we hear Cinderella sing them at the
beginning and end leaves the audience wondering if the
characters have learned their lessons or are they doomed to
repeat the same mistakes
* 5-note “bean” theme
* This motive is heard when Jack counts the beans in his hand
and is later expanded into two tender melodies: Jack’s “I
Guess This is Goodbye” and the Witch’s “Lament.”

Question 16

is into tje wooods a teaching musical

Answer 16

yes

allagoy

Question 17

problem w having the same book and writer

Answer 17

not harsh enough on yoursekf

Question 18

does sonheim often do tende muscials

Answer 18

no, rarely

Question 19

Challenges of into the woods

Answer 19

Use of a narrator
* That Sondheim and Lapine decided to rely on a narrator
to tell their story suggests that they couldn’t find a
better way

Off-stage events
* Some important events happen offstage (Cinderella at
the ball, Jack with the giants). Wouldn’t it be better for
these aspects of the plot to unfold onstage

Too many instructional numbers
* Rodgers and Hammerstein often included an
instructional number in their second acts
* “The Farmer and the Cowman” (Oklahoma!), “You’ll Never
Walk Alone” (Carousel), “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught”
(South Pacific), “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” (The Sound of Music)
* Sondheim and Lapine included 3 preachy numbers
back-to-back
* “No More,” “No One Is Alone,” and “Children Will Listen”

Lots of characters leaving too little time for
characterization
* With the exception of Cinderella and the Baker’s Wife
(who won the Tony), most characters remain one-
dimensional cardboard cutouts

More about ideas than characters
* We will see how this criticism applies to Love Life too

Question 20

Prologue”

Answer 20

With no overture, Into the Woods opens with an
archetypal establishing number, titled “Prologue.”
The number spans almost 12 minutes of continuous
music on the original Broadway cast recording and 50
pages in the 320-page piano-vocal score
* It introduces 12 characters and many of the main
storylines

Question 21

overture in into the woods

Answer 21

no overture

Question 22

Prologue 7 and 8” (“You wish to have the
curse reversed” and “Ladies, our carriage
waits”)

Answer 22

7: The Witch reveals to the Baker and his Wife the 4
ingredients they must retrieve to lift the curse: a cow as
white as milk (Jack and the Beanstalk), a cape as red as
blood (Little Red Ridinghood), a slipper as pure as gold
(Cinderella), and hair as yellow as corn (Rapunzel)
* 8: Cinderella’s evil stepmother, stepsisters (Florinda and
Lucinda), and father go to the festival and leave
Cinderella behind

Question 23

On the Steps of the Palace”

Answer 23

Sung by Cinderella near the end of Act I
* One of four recognition numbers in the score, also
Jack’s “Giants in the Sky,” Little Red Ridinghood’s “I
Know Things Now,” and the Baker’s Wife’s “Moments in
the Woods”
* Sondheim and Lapine’s Cinderella is remarkably
different from the one in the traditional fairytale. She is
not sure that she wants to be swept off her feet by
Prince Charming
* The angular, unpredictable melody is difficult to sing

Question 24

It Takes Two”

Answer 24

Sung by the Baker and his Wife in Act I
* A romantic duet that marks a shift in the development
of the relationship between the Baker and his Wife. At
the beginning, he is determined to break the Witch’s
curse alone but now realizes “it takes two”