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INTO THE WOODSTyler's Page

The 2002 Revival

Welcome to my "Into the Woods" website!
The musical, written by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, combines classic fairy tales into a story about 'the complicatons of living in modern society and the difficult choices we encounter on the paths of our lives'. The stories - including Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Ridinghood, and Rapunzel - are joined with a new creation; the tale of The Baker and His Wife.

Synopsis
written by Sheryl Flatow
with continuing pages written by Tyler Nye

Act I
Once upon a time there was a beleaguered young maiden called Cinderella, an abstracted boy named Jack and a childless Baker and his Wife. The curtain rises on their cottages, where the much-put-upon Cinderella cleans the kitchen; the impoverished Jack futilely attempts to milk his haggard cow and companion, Milky-White, and the Baker and his Wife prepare the next day's bread. A Narrator begins to tell their tales, as they express musically their various wishes, cross-cutting from one to the next: Cinderella wants to go to the King's three-night Festival, Jack is hoping that Milky-White will give some milk, and the Baker and his Wife dream of a child.

   Each of their reveries is interrupted: Jack's Mother appears and insists her son sell his beloved "pet"; a ravenous Little Red Ridinghood comes calling on the Baker in preparation for a visit to her sick Grandmother, and Cinderella's Stepmother and stepsisters, Florinda and Lucinda, enter and mock her. The Stepmother throws a pot of lentils into the ashes and tells the girl that if she can remove them within two hours, she may come along to the ball at the Festival. Cinderella, who can talk to birds, enlists their help in accomplishing the task. But when her family, including her Father, leaves for the palace, she is left behind.

   Just after Red Ridinghood, her basket filled with bread and cakes, begins her journey into the woods, the Baker and his Wife hear another knock at the door. It so happens that they live in the house of the Baker's parents, who died years ago in a "baking accident" - or so the Baker believes - and the cottage next door belongs to an ugly Witch, who has come to pay the couple a visit. She reveals that years ago the Baker's father, to please his wife, stole greens from her garden, including some special beans. In exchange the Witch insisted that the Baker's parents give up their unborn child, a sister the Baker never knew he had - a girl named Rapunzel, whom the Witch has hidden somewhere in the forest. But the Witch didn't stop there. She laid a curse: their "family tree would always be a barren one."

   However, she tells the Baker and his Wife they can undo the spell if, before the stroke of midnight in three days' time, they can go into the woods and find the four ingredients needed for a potion: "the cow as white as milk; the cape as red as blood; the hair as yellow as corn; the slipper as pure as gold."

   The Baker insists that, since the curse is on his house, he must lift the spell without the aid of his Wife, who wants to help. Before he begins his quest - alone - he discovers six beans in a jacket belonging to his father and takes them along in case they are the special beans the Witch spoke of.

   So the Baker sets out to break the spell; Jack goes off to sell Milky-White for "no less than five pounds," as his Mother warns him, and Cinderella travels to her Mother's grave, to ask for guidance (Prologue: Into the Woods).

   As the characters begin their journeys their homes disappear, and we are in the woods.....
                                 Click to Continue the Synopsis