{"id":97,"date":"2026-04-28T14:06:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T14:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/?p=97"},"modified":"2026-04-28T20:26:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T20:26:20","slug":"into-the-woods-lauren-mlicko-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/into-the-woods-lauren-mlicko-26\/","title":{"rendered":"Into the Woods:<\/em> What Can We Learn? Lauren Mlicko \u201926"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBe ready for the journey\u201d:\u00a0 these were the words on posters around campus advertising Holy Cross\u2019s recent production of <\/span>Into the Woods<\/span><\/i>, 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\u2019t wait to see these people shine in leading roles that were so well fitted to their artistic strengths. However, the journey I wasn\u2019t quite ready for was that which I was about to embark on with the show material itself\u2014that is, with the raw text and music\u2014even after the Holy Cross production ended.<\/span><\/p>\n

My curiosity as a Sondheim-enthusiast was only further fueled after my conversation with the show\u2019s 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 <\/span>Into the Woods<\/span><\/i> 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\u2019re familiar with. The show starts and ends with the line \u201cI wish!\u201d bringing this theme of ambition and following one\u2019s dreams full circle. What happens in the meantime, however, is far from linear.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Act II opens, each of the characters, including Cinderella and her step-family, the Baker and Baker\u2019s Wife, the Princes, Jack (and the Beanstalk) and his mother, and Little Red sing of how they never thought they\u2019d be so happy. It isn\u2019t long before this facade is undermined by the arrival of the giant, which ultimately reveals how the characters weren\u2019t nearly as fulfilled as they thought they were. Cinderella\u2019s prince, for example, has supposedly found perfection in life with Cinderella, but can\u2019t help but succumb to temptation when he meets the Baker\u2019s wife alone in the woods. Perhaps the longest learning curve is met by the \u2018child\u2019 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 <\/span>Into the Woods<\/span><\/i>, for her own sake as well as for the sake of her friends.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s \u201cGiants in the Sky\u201d and Little Red\u2019s \u201cI Know Things Now\u201d share a virtually identical pattern of highly-active eighth notes below their melodies. While Cinderella\u2019s \u201cOn the Steps of the Palace\u201d 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 \u201cNo One Is Alone\u201d 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 \u201cWitches can be right, giants can be good. You decide what\u2019s right, you decide what\u2019s good.\u201d 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 \u201cNo More\u201d and \u201cChildren Will Listen\u201d; it\u2019s as if Sondheim packed the deepest and most confronting of his poetry all into these final fifteen minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Professor Meaghan Deiter, who directed the Holy Cross production, perhaps put it best when she said \u201cthe woods represent everything [existing] in life itself,\u201d 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\u2019s naivete turned to fierce protectiveness, to the Baker\u2019s complicated relationship with his family and upbringing, to the Witch\u2019s disillusionment with the world and complex morality. If nothing else, Professor Deiter says, perhaps our main takeaway from <\/span>Into the Woods <\/span><\/i>should be that we can\u2019t simply fix all that is wrong with the world by making the most obviously \u2018right\u2019 choices. \u201cWe can\u2019t avoid the giant\u2026 instead we have to decide how to keep moving forward, be brave, and work together,\u201d she says. Though a storybook \u201chappily ever after\u201d simply does not exist, we can still find joy and strength in our life journeys, so long as we remember to do so intentionally.<\/span><\/p>\n

Careful the wish you make<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Wishes are children<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Careful the path they take<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Wishes come true, not free<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Careful the tale you tell<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

That is the spell<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u2013 \u201cChildren Will Listen,\u201d Stephen Sondheim<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cBe ready for the journey\u201d:\u00a0 these were the words on posters around campus advertising Holy Cross\u2019s 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\u2019t wait… Continue reading Into the Woods:<\/em> What Can We Learn? Lauren Mlicko \u201926<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":800,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"issue":[12],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-volumes","issue-vol-3-spring-2026","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/800"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/art-notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}