So, the current production Into the Woods on Broadway is really, really good.
If I’m being honest, I was lukewarm about the show itself. The current Broadway cast is a dream-team-all-star-game of Broadway, and that’s what I was there to see. But the production is so outstanding and theatre goers are so “here for it,” that the producers first extended the run and moving forward, the leads will replaced on September sixth with Broadway big-names that are just as exciting as the likes of Phillipa Soo, Sara Bareilles, Bryan D’arcy James, Patina Miller and on and on. The full list of cast replacements is here…
When I was a theatre major, my peers were a little obsessed with the show. And do you know what theater majors do when they’re standing around waiting for class or rehearsal to start? They sing stuff. And Into the Woods was a mighty popular go to. Standing around the piano belting out Into the Woods day after day was what we did. (Well, I didn’t I can’t sing.) There were two guys who would sing Agony unprompted, anywhere – in the dining hall… anywhere.
I also saw a community theatre production a few years later and it was just so bad that if memory serves, I left at intermission. So ended my relationship with Into the Woods.
Crash course: Into the Woods is one of the late, great Stephen Sondheim’s biggest and most accessible shows. This is its fourth Broadway production since it opened in 1987, not to mention the film a few years ago with Meryl Streep. It is a mash up of classic fairy tales like Jack and the Bean Stalk, Little Red Riding hood and so on, through an adult lens.
For this reason, it is a go to with amateur and school productions, and most theatre nerds were either in it or know someone who was.
Sidenote:
Getting seated at a Broadway show is like being processed after an arrest. Tension, lines, metal detectors… I understand, I have worked with the public most of my life. Tourists stumbling around Times Square are paying attention to nothing at all, maybe a little drunk and might not have any idea what you’re saying. Getting fifteen hundred people to sit the fuck down would likely turn anyone into a drill sergeant, but these guys could use a vacation, maybe.
I got lucky getting tickets the way I do; I met a guy in the cast and asked how hard it was to get tickets and he offered to hook me up with standing room.
Once we made it to standing room, the curt usher mumble-barked something at me about checking our bags. I said, Huh? Why? He said there’s not enough room for bags in standing room.
I go to bag check. That’s three dollars. Do I even have cash? Luckily, I did.
I get back to standing room.
Same Jerk: You need a mask.
Me: The website says only the first two rows have to be masked.
Jerk: … And standing room
Me: Our masks are in my bag which I just checked,
Jerk: There’s a mask machine down front…
I start walking down toward the stage. Another usher blocks me; Where you going?
Me: Jerk guy said there’s a mask machine down here…
Other Usher: It’s in the lobby
Me: But Jerk Guy said… never mind.
So, we stood there in our masks, the people in front of us – closer to the stage – didn’t have to wear masks. Maybe breath particles float over the crowd when you’re standing.
I seriously wonder if past productions have leaned into the comedy of the piece the way this one does. The director and cast have wrung every possible comic moment out of the first act that there was for the taking. The audience seemed about to die from sheer joy. The show was not meant to have a long run as it was an expat from the City Center Encores! series and for that reason, the sets are minimal with the orchestra upstage and simple birch trees and a full moon setting the mood. In contrast, the costumes are blindingly colorful, as if twenty or so of the most talented people on the planet raided the costume shop and decided to put on Into The Woods – not unlike my college friends standing around that piano.
The second act sneaks up on you in a way that no one had even mentioned. See the first act ends all tied up happy ending style leaving the audience to wonder, Okay, what now?
The second act comes crashing down into, if not darkness then shadow, and the innocence and safety of the childhood stories is stripped away. What are the repercussions of giants walking around and princes forcing people into marriage not to mention the murder of grandmothers and predatory wolves?
The Woods is the World. The Woods is adult life! Your wife leaves you – people die; but there are children to teach and work to be done. There is pain and there is beauty and life goes on.
That’s what woods are for
For those moments in the woods
Oh, if life were made of moments
Even now and then, a bad one…
But if life were only moments
Then you’d never know you had one.
