Into The Woods

Posted on March 31, 2008
Filed Under Musical Theater, School | Leave a Comment

Into The Woods opens at the Merriam Theater on Wednesday night, April 2. It’s the second time I’ve directed the show, and I’m just as excited as I was back in 1994. Below, the director’s note I wrote for the program. I hope you can make it!

I’ve known and loved the musical Into The Woods for over twenty years, to the point where my relationship with this show seems more personal than professional. It opened on Broadway in November of 1987, and I saw it several months later. My ticket was a Christmas present from my wife, who realized that a second ticket would have been an impossible extravagance and chose to spend that night at home with our toddler son. I directed the show on this stage in 1994, the first mainstage musical to be produced by the then-new Musical Theater Program at The University of the Arts; my collaborators included Nancy Kantra and Jay Madara, beloved colleagues still, and the cast included Bill Buddendorf, now a faculty member in the School of Theater Arts, and Heather Donahue, who starred in the indie film hit The Blair Witch Project shortly after she graduated. There was a memorable production at the Arden Theater in 2001 and a Broadway revival in 2002, but the most unforgettable version of Into The Woods I experienced was a high school production in which my son played the Mysterious Man, who, in case you don’t know the show by heart, is the father of the Baker and spends his whole life tormented by the consequences of an impulsive act of generosity. “How was I to know?” he asks his son in anguish, and I wonder, how was I to know this show would come to occupy such a prominent place in my heart?

Into The Woods is thematically as rich as any musical has a right to be, and its deep humanity is, in many ways, a testament to the legacy of Sondheim’s mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II. The show is an allegory about desire and its consequences. The play begins with the wishes of its principal characters, and the first act ends with those wishes seemingly fulfilled and the characters prepared to live happily ever after; the second act brilliantly explores what happens after “ever after,” and how all our actions have unexpected consequences. It is a rich, nuanced tale, full of complex characters and surprising reversals that challenge our simple notions of right and wrong. In an era of global warming, terrorist attacks and an ever-widening rift between privileged and poor, one can’t help but be struck to the heart by the truths of this tale: “Careful! No one is alone!”

The story of Into The Woods is intensely meaningful for parents, not to mention anyone who’s ever been raised by a parent. As a father with two sons now reaching adulthood, and as a teacher whose fond concern for his protégés is at least partly paternal, I am constantly aware of how values get passed along from one generation to the next. Both Little Red Riding Hood and Jack have to navigate the tricky path from childhood to adulthood in this story, and discover that maturity is a mixed blessing, coming as it does with responsibility: “Isn’t it nice to know a lot? And a little bit not,” is the way Little Red puts it at the end of her song. The Witch tries to justify her wicked excesses to her daughter Rapunzel, proclaiming “I was just trying to be a good mother!” and really, that’s what every parent wants, but at the end of the play, she returns to remind us, “Careful the things you do/Children will see and learn.” Author James Lapine dedicated Into The Woods to his daughter Phoebe, born in 1986, and you’ll see abundant evidence of a father’s love both on the page and on the stage in this production.

The School of Theater Arts celebrates its Silver Anniversary this season, and the decision to mount Into The Woods as part of that celebration acknowledges the importance of this show in the history of the UArts Musical Theater Program, which has grown from modest beginnings in the early 1990’s to become one of the premier conservatory programs for musical theater training in the world. Many of the faculty in that program have been steadfast partners in that development, and I must gratefully acknowledge the contributions of my colleagues, both those on the production team and those teachers behind the scenes who make a daily difference in the lives of the young artists onstage. Laurie Beechman, the singer and actress whose memory is honored by a scholarship presented each spring to a musical theater student, chose the title song for her 1996 CD from the score of Into The Woods, and as I think back on the generosity of the teachers, theater professionals, families and other benefactors who have contributed to the remarkable growth of the Musical Theater Program since its inception seventeen years ago, I am acutely aware that “truly, no one is alone.”

Into The Woods

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