Into the Woods (1987)
Book: James Lapine
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In short: Into the Woods is one of Sondheim’s most popular musicals. The familiar, one-dimensional fairy tale characters we know are reimagined here as complex individuals who must confront life’s difficult truths.
The first Sondheim musical whose dark thematic underside is
frank rich (award-winning theater critic and producer)
as accessible as its jolly storytelling surface.
To hear the cathartic and beautiful final song of Into the Woods
is to be overwhelmed once more by the continuity of one of the
American theater’s most extraordinary songwriting careers.
Overview Into the Woods - background and excerpts
After the artistic achievement of Sunday, Sondheim teamed up with James Lapine again for the more accessible Into the Woods. Deceptively simple on the surface, with familiar fairy tale characters and recognizable storylines, the musical delves into profound life themes. It appeals to a broad audience, is frequently performed, and was adapted into a film by Disney.
Plot Summary
The story follows a baker and his wife who are desperate to break a witch’s curse so they can have a child. To do so, they must gather four specific items, leading them into the woods where they cross paths with Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack (of Beanstalk fame), and Rapunzel. In the first act, all the characters’ wishes come true, but the second act reveals the consequences of those wishes, forcing them to confront the ramifications of their actions.
Careful the wish
you make,
wishes are children.
Careful the path
they take,
wishes come true.
Not free.
Into the woods
to get my wish.
I don’t care how.
The time is now.
The woods are
just trees.
The trees are
just wood.
Isn’t it nice to
know a lot,
and a little bit not?
Themes
“Ah, the woods. The all-purpose symbol of the unconscious, the womb, the past, the dark place where we face our trials and emerge wiser or destroyed…,” Sondheim wrote about Into the Woods . The musical delves into themes of parenthood, moral ambiguity, life and death, community, and personal responsibility—all set against the symbolic backdrop of the woods.
In the first act, familiar fairy tales unfold, but with a twist: the characters are reimagined with a psychological complexity rooted in Jungian ideas. Lapine and Sondheim seamlessly weave these stories together, building toward what seems like a classic “happily ever after.”
Like Sunday in the Park with George, the first act feels as a completed story, but the unpredictable second act plunges into deeper territory. The black-and-white morality of fairy tales dissolves into shades of gray. A powerful symbol of this shift is the characters’ decision to sacrifice the narrator to the giant. The second act examines what “happily ever after” really means: What price is paid for the wishes fulfilled in the first act? How does the past continue to haunt us? What happens to a community when personal desires conflict with collective needs? And how does fulfilling one wish inevitably lead to another? The musical begins and ends with the same poignant refrain: “I wish.”
Music
Into the Woods features a vibrant mix of playful, lively melodies and deeply emotional, intricate compositions. The music is marked by frequent syncopation in the (internal) dialogues and the use of leitmotifs—specific musical themes linked to characters or ideas, which recur and evolve throughout the show. One example is the motif associated with the recurring words “I wish” in the opening and closing. These motifs create musical cohesion and emphasize the interconnectedness of the stories.
Reception
Into the Woods was warmly received by audiences and most critics. The original Broadway production won several Tony Awards, including Best Score and Best Book, despite competition from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera , as well as a Grammy for Best Cast Album. The musical has since seen countless revivals and was successfully adapted into a Disney film in 2014. It remains a popular choice for school productions in English-speaking countries. The most recent major Dutch production took place in 2017.
Video excerpts (in show's order)
The featured clips include performances from the original Broadway production starring Chip Zien, Joanna Gleason, and Bernadette Peters, as well as scenes from the 2014 Disney film with Meryl Streep and Anna Kendrick, and various concert renditions.
- The opening number, “Into the woods” is a nearly 15-minute piece that introduces the show’s musical themes and all the major characters. In a piano demonstration, Stephen Sondheim explained how the song’s constant musical cadence mirrors the ongoing journey without becoming monotonous. The repeated refrain of “into the woods” throughout the show symbolizes the daily ventures everyone makes into the world.
- In Act I, snapshots from the fairy tales of Little Red Riding Hood, Jack, and Cinderella are presented. In “I know things now”, “Giants in the sky” and “On the steps of the palace” these characters reflect on what their experiences have taught them, with overlapping themes and lyrical parallels. “Giants in the Sky” is featured here in a rendition by Lin-Manuel Miranda for Sondheim’s 90th birthday celebration.
- The comedic “Agony” showcases Cinderella’s and Rapunzel’s princes lamenting the difficulties of winning their respective loves. In Act II, a reprise reveals the princes, now married, confessing their fascination with Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.
- “It takes two” highlights the growing connection between the Baker and his Wife as they work together on their quest to find the four objects needed to lift the curse.
I’m not good.
I’m not nice.
I’m just right.
I’m the Witch.
You’re the world.
People make mistakes.
Holding to their own.
Thinking they’re alone.
And to get what you wish,
only just for a moment –
these are dangerous woods!
- The relationship between the Witch and her (adopted) daughter Rapunzel is explored in “Stay with me” and “She’ll Be Back.” After discovering that Rapunzel has been allowing a prince to climb her hair, the Witch pleads with her in the first song, insisting that she must be protected from the dangers of the world.
- When Rapunzel eventually leaves with the prince, the Witch sings “She’ll be back”, willing that Rapunzel will return. This song was written by Sondheim specifically for the Disney film but was ultimately cut for disrupting the film’s pacing.
- “Moments in the woods” is the Baker’s Wife’s reflective solo, echoing similar songs sung earlier by Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Jack. After an unexpected romantic encounter with Cinderella’s prince, she uses the song to reconcile the episode with her life and relationship with her husband.
- By this point in the story, events have taken a dark turn. The characters’ actions have awakened a vengeful giant who is destroying the land. In “Last midnight” the Witch confronts the small group of survivors, exposing their roles in the chaos and the deceptions they’ve committed along the way, even as they blame her for everything. When they reject her solution—sacrificing Jack—she abandons the group and the world, disillusioned by their hypocrisy and grieving the loss of her daughter.
- The Baker, overwhelmed, gives up and leaves his son behind. In “No more” (a poignant omission in the film adaptation), he is forced to face his own estranged father, who abandoned him as a child.
- As they prepare for one final attempt to stop the giant, Cinderella and the Baker comfort Little Red Riding Hood and Jack in “No one is alone”, a moving song of grief and solidarity that brings together many of the show’s central musical themes.
- The musical concludes with the often-covered “Children will listen” , featured here in a concert performance by Maria Friedman. This version includes an additional verse and bridge written by Sondheim for Barbra Streisand.
How do you ignore
all the witches, all the curses,
all the wolves, all the lies,
the false hopes, the goodbyes,
the reverses,
all the wondering what even worse is
still in store?
All the children,
all the giants…
No more.
Stephen Sondheim about Into the Woods
“In any event, the gimmick—or, more respectably, the idea—of mashing the tales together gave us a form, much as gimmicks have done in the past (see Schnitzler’s La Ronde). If we were to focus on the consequences of the little transgressions each character makes in pursuit of his or her heart’s desire, it followed naturally that the first act would deal with the traditional telling of the tales up to the Happily and the second with the Ever After. The first would be farce, the second melodrama (still with laughs, of course). As I say, Content Dictates Form.
Having learned so much about the subject of farce from my four-year observation of Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart struggling over the intricacies of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, I generously offered to give Lapine the benefit of my knowledge to help him construct the plot. To this end I suggested he draw a detailed linear map which would chart the progress of each character’s journey through the woods and how it intersected with each of the others. He gave me a tolerant smile, said he’d think about it and plunged headlong into the woods, into the middle of the story, with minimal ideas as to where things would lead (or so he led me to believe) and emerged from them with the best-constructed farce since Forum. The elegance with which he cross-cuts among the four stories simultaneously throughout the show still astonishes me. It is a lesson in play construction.
I must add that at one point in the collaborative joy of our early discussions I brashly predicted that if the piece worked, it would spawn innumerable productions for many years to come, since it dealt with world myths and fables and would therefore never feel dated. Moreover, it would appeal to schools and amateur theaters as well as professional ones, especially in conservative parts of the country which are hesitant to support shows that deal with contemporary themes in contemporary ways and use four-letter words (there are none in the show). I predicted that Into the Woods could be a modest annuity for us, and I’m surprised to say I was right.”
More Into the Woods: audio and video
Cast albums
Go to More Sondheim for our Sondheim Archives.
Into the Woods in the Netherlands
Upcoming production
THEATERSCHOOL TEYLINGEN
Run: November 2024-December 2024
Opening: November 14, 2024, Theater Teylingen
Tickets/info: Click here.
Most recent large production
PIT PRODUCTIES
Opening: Februari 19, 2017, Oude Luxor Theater, Rotterdam
Cast: Esther Maas (Witch), Wart Kamps (Baker), Lone van Roosendaal (Baker's Wife), Brigitte Heitzer (Cinderella), Paul Groot (Wolf/prince), Elise Schaap (Little Red Riding Hood), René van Kooten (prince), Guido Spek (Jack), Laus Steenbeeke (Narrator) and others.
Translation: Jeremy Baker
Director: Gijs de Lange
Awards:five Musical Award nominations, including Best Translation/Lyrics/Book
Audio and video
M-Lab (2007/2010): audio and photo’s.
Reviews of Into the Woods
Original production (1987)
“The characters of Into the Woods may be figures from children’s literature, but their journey is the same painful, existential one taken by so many adults in Sondheim musicals past. Like the middle-aged showbiz cynics who return to their haunted youths in Follies and Merrily We Roll Along, or the contemporary descendant who revisits Georges Seurat’s hallowed park in Sunday in the Park With George, or the lovers who court in a nocturnal Scandinavian birch forest in A Little Night Music, Cinderella and company travel into a dark, enchanted wilderness to discover who they are and how they might grow up and overcome the eternal, terrifying plight of being alone. To hear ”No One Is Alone,” the cathartic and beautiful final song of Into the Woods, is to be overwhelmed once more by the continuity of one of the American theater’s most extraordinary songwriting careers. […] The result is unique to its composer’s canon – the first Sondheim musical whose dark thematic underside is as accessible as its jolly storytelling surface. Into the Woods may be just the tempting, unthreatening show to lead new audiences to an artist who usually lures theatergoers far deeper, and far more dangerously, into the woods. ” – Frank Rich, The New York Times (1984)
2014 film adaptation
Broadway revival (2022)
“Even in a second- or third-rate production, Into the Woods is delightful, big and lovable and accessible and loaded with some of Stephen Sondheim’s most gorgeous and endearing songs.
In a top-flight production, the 1986 musical is transcendent. And make no mistake: Whatever else this summer will be remembered for, we can say this: New Yorkers and visitors to this city currently have a chance to witness the transcendence of a musical theater masterpiece.” – Greg Evans, Deadline (2022)
