Into the Woods

Stephen Sondheim was born March 22, 1930 in New York City. He has won 8 Grammy awards, 8 Tony awards, 7 Drama Desk Awards, 1 OBIE Award, and 6 Lawrence Olivier Awards. His interest in theatre stemmed from the first Broadway musical he saw when he was nine years old, Very Warm for May. His father abandoned him and his mother when he was ten years old. After that, his relationship with his mother was very rocky. During his childhood, Sondheim befriended James Hammerstein, son of Oscar Hammerstein II. Oscar Hammerstein II had a great influence on Sondheim and helped to grow his love of musical theatre. After an apprenticeship with Hammerstein in which Sondheim wrote four musicals, Sondheim’s career got off to a rocky start. His big break came a few years later when he was twenty-five. Sondheim was hired to write the lyrics for West Side Story in 1957. It was a huge hit, and Sondheim’s career took off. In the next thirty years, Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics for Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, and Sunday in the Park with George just to name a few. In 1986, Stephen Sondheim wrote Into The Woods and was awarded a Tony Award, Grammy Award, and a Drama Desk Award for his work on the production. After Into the Woods, Sondheim wrote Assassins, Passion, Bounce, Frogs, and Road Show. In 2008, he was awarded a Special Tony Award for his lifetime achievement in theatre.

James Lapine was born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio on January 10, 1949. He graduated in 1971 from Franklin and Marshall College and went on to do graduate work at the California Institute of the Arts where he studied photography and graphic design. After he finished his education, he went on to teach design at the Yale School of Drama. While teaching, he wrote off-Broadway plays and musicals. In 1981, he collaborated with composer William Finn on March of the Falsettos. He was introduced to Stephen Sondheim in 1981. They worked together on Sunday in the Park with George in which Lapine wrote the book and directed while Sondheim wrote the music. Their next collaboration was Into the Woods, which earned Lapine a Tony and Drama Desk Award for Best Book of a Musical. They worked together again on the musical Passion. Passion was nominated for multiple awards and won Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical. In 1992, Lapine began working with William Finn again. They wrote Falsettos, New Brain, and The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Lapine has won 5 Drama Desk Awards, 3 Tony Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In 2010, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Into the Woods is a musical with music and lyrics written by Stephen Sondheim and book written by James Lapine. It was inspired by The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and importance of Fairy Tales written by Bruno Bettelheim. Into the Woods made its stage debut in San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986, and it opened on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on November 5, 1987. It closed after 764 performances on September 3, 1989.  The original cast included Bernadette Peters and Joanna Gleason who won a Tony Award for her performance. The musical has been produced many, many times both at professional and amateur levels. There is even a bood for the junior version of the show. Since it originally opened on Broadway, there has been a national tour, an opening on the West End, a revival on the West End, a Broadway revival, a London revival, and a movie. Into the Woods won Tony Awards for Best Score, Best Book and Best Revival, a Drama Desk Award for Best Musical, and a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Revival.

The play follows the lives of a handful of Brothers Grimm fairy tale characters and how their journeys intertwine when they go into the woods. The audience finally gets an answer to the question, “What happens after happily ever after?” The baker and his wife wish to have a child. Cinderella wishes to go to the King’s festival, and Jack wishes his cow would give them milk. They all go into the woods to get what they want, and eventually, everyone’s wish is granted. The characters quickly learn that they should be careful.

The show is a dark comedy about what happens when life doesn’t turn out to be as happily ever after as expected. It comments on morality, growing up, parent-children relationships, and the consequences of getting exactly what you want. Through the course of the play, the characters learn to be less selfish and more compassionate towards others. At the start, all they care about is their wishes being granted, but by the end, they really care about each other and become much more selfless.

1.     In most productions, the same actors play Mysterious Man and the narrator, Cinderella’s prince and the wolf, and Granny and Cinderella’s mother. Do you think this adds to the production or detracts from it? Why?

2.     In Act I, the wolf and Little Red Ridinghood sing “Hello Little Girl.” What do you think the theme is behind their interaction?

3.     There are a lot of characters in this show. Some reviewers have said that the stage is too crowded at most times. Do you agree? Why or why not?

4.     What do you think the witch represents in the musical?  

5.     The witch says, “I’m not good. I’m not nice. I’m just right.” What does she mean? Do you think this statement is contradictory?

6.     The witch loves Rapunzel. She keeps her locked in a tower to keep her safe from the world, which she believes to be dangerous. Do you think she is justified in her actions or is she too strict on Rapunzel?

7.     The baker and his wife are go into the woods to break the curse which will allow them to have children and start a family. What do you think about the baker’s wife’s encounter with the prince in the woods?

8.     In Act II, Jack, Baker, Cinderella, Little Red Ridinghood, and the witch sing “Your Fault.” The characters are in the middle of a crisis. Why is it so important for them to lay the blame on someone?

9.     In the second act, the characters sing “No One is Alone.” In the first act, all of the characters were only concerned with their own interests and wishes. How do the characters change from the first act to the part of the second act where they sing this song?

10. This play is about fairy tale characters. Even though it is completely fiction, do you find this show to be relatable to real life? 
11. First Rapunzel's prince goes blind, then the two stepsisters followed by the giant. Why do you think that blindness comes up in the play so many times?  Do you think it represents anything? 
12. To all of you people on the production side of things... What challenges do you think about when you think about staging, designing for, set dressing, costuming, etc. this show?



Bonus question: As a singer who has been playing music and singing for over 15 years, I feel that I am relatively good at reading music. However, when I did this show, the songs kicked my butt. I think this is some of the hardest music I've ever encountered to keep up with. The time signatures are out of control. I'm really interested to see if anyone else picked up on that or has any thoughts on the score itself.