The initial concept for the show was for Lapine to devise an entirely original story. Sondheim was intrigued was the idea of doing a quest fairy tale, and Lapine attempted to write one. But as he worked on it, he decided there were already so many existing stories that his seemed arbitrary. That approach was abandoned. Instead, he hit upon the notion of uniting numerous characters form familiar folk literature.
Into the Woods is constructed as a chamber-music piece and contains many16- and 32-bar song forms, befitting its uncomplicated characters. Various moments in the show are reinforced and commented upon with brief musical passages in the manner of a Disney movie, and the catchy, recurring title song is a gloss on coutless Disney numbers.
But unlike those cartoons, which invariably sanitized many of the violent and brutal aspects of fairy tales, Lapine and Sondheim reacquaint us with crueler elements of these stories. The more gruesome moments in the show - like the blinding of Rapunzel's Prince and Cinderella's stepsisters - are taken straight from the source material.
Into the Woods, which marks the second collaboration for the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, grapples with many of the traditional concerns of folk tales. The show deals with growing up; with the relationship between parents and children; with taking responsibility; with developing a code of morality; with wish-fulfillment. But most fairy tales present right and wrong in childlike terms of black and white. Sondheim and Lapine serve up a coutionary tale in various shades of gray: witches tell the truth, nice people lie, good people die. Yet the characters' deeds and misdeeds bring them closer together, until they coalesce into a interdependent community and work in concert to slay a Giant who threatens their very existence. The message is clear: only by banding together can we conquer the giants who cast shadows over our own society.
Despite the musical's dark implications, a sweetness and simplicity colors the book and the score from beginning to end. While the suthors dismiss the motion of "happily ever after" as something that only happends in children's stories, they offer a far more pragmatic - and affecting - conclusion to Into the Woods: an affirmation of faith in mankind, a reminder that, even when things look the blackest...."No one is alone" |
