Into the Woods, Jr. was the first “real” show I participated in as a 7th grader in 2008. I had the honor of playing “the witch’s magic” and, quite literally, a tree. I was enamored with the larger than life story that I was taking part in: the grandiose periaktoi, the Witch’s opening number rap, and the poignant message of “Children Will Listen” (which I was far too young to understand). By our closing, I had been fully infected by the musical theater bug and begun my reverence for Stephen Sondheim. I took Sondheim into my high school career, singing “Comedy Tonight” for my sophomore musical audition, learning to accompany myself on piano while singing “Send in the Clowns,” and being radicalized my junior year while watching his 80th Birthday Concert on YouTube. There’s an iconic segment of the concert where Sondheim’s leading ladies are all clad in red and take turns performing. I was brought to tears, overwhelmed with how one man could capture the beautiful and tragic complexities of life with such dazzling melodies.
While pursuing my music education degree, I began exploring how leitmotifs and musical structures can deepen and expand the ability to storytell. Stephen Sondheim masterfully demonstrates this in his stories. His musical themes oftentimes directly contradict what the characters are singing and actually “spoil” the plot early on if you know what to listen for, as is the case in Sweeney Todd.
This is when Into the Woods re-entered my life. For several years, Into the Woods was nothing more than a fond memory and the original source of Barbra Streisand's version of “Children Will Listen.” As a freshman at MSU, my friend Aaron invited several of us over to watch the OBC Pro-Shot of Into the Woods. This marked my first time seeing the entire production, and I was in complete awe. The second act fully recontextualized what I knew of the show! While Act I was as delightful as I remembered, the show takes an honest turn which confronts its audience with the stark honesty that the stories we tell ourselves are often not the full truth. While we are the protagonists of our own lives, our choices and actions can be the “giant” in someone else’s.
Through my work at Taft, I have come to find a true collaborative kinship with Jon Cohen. What started as a seed with Mr. Burns grew into a full bloom with our most ambitious project, LIZZIE. Jon listened patiently over the years to my explanations of how “art isn’t created in a vacuum” and how there was “no way that Sondheim--a queer, Jewish man during the AIDS crisis--wrote a musical about the death of childhood and those two things aren’t related.” Through many conversations, we crafted a cohesive vision of what we wanted to tell with this story. With gratitude, we present to you that vision below:
The world is a scary place. Giants are legion: economic crises, environmental calamities, and endless wars rampage, leaving destruction and despair in their wake. The very fabric of American democratic society itself appears under threat as polarization and partisan rancor divide us against our neighbors and power trumps principles with impunity. Why then, in this exceptionally fraught moment, are we doing a show about fairy tales?
We are doing it because while we are lost in the woods, Stephen Sondheim offers us a pathway through them with timeless music and lyrics, supported ably by James Lapine’s book. Into the Woods speaks urgently to our moment in time and feels as prescient as it did to audiences in 1987. It does not shy away from hard truths about the world's dangers, and it goes to some very dark places (it’s a Jones & Cohen show, after all). The conclusion, though, is hopeful. The last words in the show are “I wish...”
Hope alone is not enough, of course, and Into the Woods rejects blind optimism and complacency. As the characters discover, “wishes come true, not free.” We have it within ourselves to get through the woods, slay the giants, and make our wishes come true, but we have to work together to earn our happily ever afters.
"Things will turn out right now. We can make it so." The proof of this is right here in front of you, in this wish of a production, and especially in the students who make it come true. Collaborating with them and with our colleagues to bring this beautiful landmark of American musical theatre to you today has been among the most challenging and deeply rewarding experiences of our lives, and we are so thankful for the journey. We wish...
