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Mammoth Lakes, CA
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Wednesday, November 19, 2008
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Giants, witches and the magic of Into the Woods |
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Thursday, 10 April 2008 |
Sondheim musical has roots in classic folklore and fairy tales
By Andy Geisel
Mammoth Times Staff
 Playwright Stephen Sondheim, seen here at Sardi's in New York City, Sept. 2001. His Into the Woods draws from classic fairy tales.PHOTO: J.M. CHAPMAN/COURTESY SONDHEIM.ORG
Yet, the show that's arguably his best-known hit, Into the Woods, which has its Mammoth High School Drama debut on April 24, is derived from simple folklore and fairy tales. Like many great artists, Sondheim, who graduated from Williams College with the Hutchinson Prize for Music Composition and did his post graduate work in music theory and composition, is basically a storyteller at heart. Many of his stories and song lyrics, when viewed as whole works, are essentially elaborate fantasies, due no doubt to his mentoring at a young age by legendary lyric and book writer Oscar Hammerstein II (Oklahoma, The King and I, The Sound of Music). Nowhere, though, are the elements of fantasy more on display than in the wildly inventive Into the Woods.
Giants and witches
Fairy tales and folk legends have been adapted for various media many times, but none to the extent Sondheim took them in Into the Woods. Inspired by Bruno Bettelheim's 1976 book, The Uses of Enchantment, the plot of Into the Woods intertwines several Brothers Grimm fairy tales and protracts them out further to explore the consequences of the characters' wishes and quests. The main characters are taken from the stories of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Cinderella, tied together by an original story involving a baker and his wife and their quest to begin a family, and including references to several other well-known tales.
Giants and witches, two of the most familiar figures in popular folk tales and fairy stories, both appear in Into the Woods. The ugly Witch, one of the musical's main antagonists, is a stock-in-trade fairy tale archetype and the Jack and the Giant storyline is a clever use of the classic Jack and the Beanstalk.
A trip Into the Woods...
Before it opened on Broadway in the fall of 1987, the production of Into the Woods started out simply as well. During workshops in summer 1986, with staging still in the design phase, the songs and book were all that existed, and all the actors had were baseball caps with the characters' names stitched on them. Following a test performance in December that year in San Diego, Calif., it went back to New York for more workshops and rehearsals before opening for a run of 764 performances, starting on Nov. 5, 1987. Ironically, perhaps serendipitously, the show premiered on the 175th anniversary of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimms' first 86-tale volume of Young People's and Household Tales in 1812.
The show, which starred Bernadette Peters (Sunday in the Park with George) and Joanna Gleason, was an almost instant hit, generating two cast albums, a road company touring version, a PBS "Great Performances" edition for TV and a London production. Into the Woods won several Tony Awards, including Best Score, Best Book and Best Actress — Musical (Joanna Gleason), no small feat in a year dominated by The Phantom of the Opera.
Kevin Worden, Mammoth High School Drama Teacher since 1983, has rented costumes for the 23 cast members and procured professional Broadway musical sound. Into the Woods has a lot of very well defined characters, rather than a few lead roles, therefore, “I waited a long time to do this musical because I had to wait for the right combination of people,” Worden said.
The Mammoth High School Drama production of Into the Woods, directed by Kevin Worden plays April 24-26, and the following week, April 30-May 3. All shows start at 7 p.m. on the Mammoth High School Stage. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students and children.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 17 April 2008 )
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