“Be ready for the journey”: these were the words on posters around campus advertising Holy Cross’s recent production of Into the Woods, put on by the Department of Theatre and Dance in the Luth Concert Hall of the Prior Performing Arts Center. As a friend of many of the cast members, I already couldn’t wait to see these people shine in leading roles that were so well fitted to their artistic strengths. However, the journey I wasn’t quite ready for was that which I was about to embark on with the show material itself—that is, with the raw text and music—even after the Holy Cross production ended.
My curiosity as a Sondheim-enthusiast was only further fueled after my conversation with the show’s music director and resident collaborative pianist of the theatre department, Daniel Stocker, who graciously shared with me some of what he learned over the many months of rehearsal for this production. We began by establishing how the first act of Into the Woods comprises the classic fairytales that everybody knows, while the second act tells what happens once the fairytale characters actually have what (they think) they want, beyond the storybook endings we’re familiar with. The show starts and ends with the line “I wish!” bringing this theme of ambition and following one’s dreams full circle. What happens in the meantime, however, is far from linear.
As Act II opens, each of the characters, including Cinderella and her step-family, the Baker and Baker’s Wife, the Princes, Jack (and the Beanstalk) and his mother, and Little Red sing of how they never thought they’d be so happy. It isn’t long before this facade is undermined by the arrival of the giant, which ultimately reveals how the characters weren’t nearly as fulfilled as they thought they were. Cinderella’s prince, for example, has supposedly found perfection in life with Cinderella, but can’t help but succumb to temptation when he meets the Baker’s wife alone in the woods. Perhaps the longest learning curve is met by the ‘child’ characters, namely Jack, Little Red, and to some extent Cinderella. These characters certainly endure the most growth and emotional maturation throughout the second act. Ultimately, along with the Baker, they are also the characters who survive, and who remain loyal to each other through thick and thin. While Little Red enters the woods with total naivete, and then flips to total distrust of her surroundings after her encounter with the Wolf, by the end of the story she is able to find her best judgement somewhere in between. Similarly, Jack comes to realize not only that the world is vast, but also complicated. After losing his mother, he finally reckons with what it means to be truly independent, while also finding a father figure in the Baker, and a new family with Cinderella and Little Red. Finally, Cinderella finds it in herself to leave the life she thought would bring her true happiness, and also commits herself to helping her community find a semblance of peace after experiencing the loss of so many neighbors. While still a young woman, Cinderella becomes a true adult by the end of Into the Woods, for her own sake as well as for the sake of her friends.
As Jack, Little Red, and Cinderella make their way through the woods, their relative innocence is represented by similar musical accompaniment and rhythmic patterns. In particular, Jack’s “Giants in the Sky” and Little Red’s “I Know Things Now” share a virtually identical pattern of highly-active eighth notes below their melodies. While Cinderella’s “On the Steps of the Palace” is more distinct with its 6/8 time signature and less simplistic harmonies, it too contains moving arpeggiations in the accompaniment, which at least loosely mirror the musical hallmarks of the other younger characters. After Jack, Little Red, Cinderella have their individual musical moments in Act I, they share (along with the Baker) what is undoubtedly one of the most special musical moments of the show, the song “No One Is Alone” towards the end of Act II. As Cinderella and the Baker take on parent-like roles for Little Red and Jack, respectively, they assert the integral lesson that “Witches can be right, giants can be good. You decide what’s right, you decide what’s good.” Thus, in his signature way, Sondheim gracefully and effectively ties these characters together, making the journey they share all the more moving. These characters also display their newfound maturity in the songs “No More” and “Children Will Listen”; it’s as if Sondheim packed the deepest and most confronting of his poetry all into these final fifteen minutes.
Professor Meaghan Deiter, who directed the Holy Cross production, perhaps put it best when she said “the woods represent everything [existing] in life itself,” from our hardest challenges, to experiences of self-discovery, to moments we only learn later not to take at face value. We can likely find something of ourselves in at least one of the characters, from Little Red’s naivete turned to fierce protectiveness, to the Baker’s complicated relationship with his family and upbringing, to the Witch’s disillusionment with the world and complex morality. If nothing else, Professor Deiter says, perhaps our main takeaway from Into the Woods should be that we can’t simply fix all that is wrong with the world by making the most obviously ‘right’ choices. “We can’t avoid the giant… instead we have to decide how to keep moving forward, be brave, and work together,” she says. Though a storybook “happily ever after” simply does not exist, we can still find joy and strength in our life journeys, so long as we remember to do so intentionally.
Careful the wish you make
Wishes are children
Careful the path they take
Wishes come true, not free
Careful the tale you tell
That is the spell
– “Children Will Listen,” Stephen Sondheim