Comment on this story What: Into the Woods When: 8 p.m. Tues.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sunday, thru Nov. 20. Where: Clarence Brown Theatre Cost: $27. Discounts available for seniors, students and UT faculty. Call 974-5161 for tickets.

Into the Woods is a tale for our time

by Paige M. Travis

Fairy tales are merely sketches of real life. Faced with moral dilemmas, basic characters make simple decisions with literal or magical outcomes. Adulthood, with its eternal gray areas, is much more ambiguous.

But even as we grow up we still cling to the framework of fairy tales. The hope contained in those enchanted lands—the slight possibility of a wish fulfilled—remains in our systems, if only as metaphors. That fairy tale retellings are territory trod by operas, television shows, post-modern feminist literature and graphic novels is a sign that tales of good and evil, princesses and witches, still resonate.

Stephen Sondheim’s 1987 musical Into the Woods takes the path less taken in fairy tale land, showing us what happens after Cinderella gets her prince at the ball, after Rapunzel escapes from the tower, and after Jack slays the Giant. Where the Grimm Brothers never revealed what happened after everyone’s wishes came true, Sondheim fills in the gaps.

Into the Woods begins with the wishes of three fairy tale stalwarts. The Baker and his Wife (Jon Levenson and Morgan Scott) want to have a baby. Jack and his mother (Jay Schaad and Nancy Dinwiddie) need to sell their cow. Cinderella (Harmony Livingston) longs to escape her stepmother’s house and go to the king’s ball. The opening song introduces these characters in a flurry of overlapped voices singing out their dreams. The layered voices and the swell of live music (which, in the Clarence Brown Theatre’s production, is provided by a pit orchestra) is thrilling, almost overwhelming. It’s impossible to catch all the lyrics, but the effect is worth the result (even if some viewers might wish for subtitles).

Within the first song, the characters’ personalities are revealed: Jack is a little dense, his mother greedy; the Baker’s Wife is a sharp cookie who prods her insecure husband into action; and Cinderella is sweet, naïve and unsure of herself.

What brings them together—and twists their tales beyond the Grimms’ wildest imagining—is their eventual need to go into the woods, where, as Shakespeare also knew, enchanted and mysterious things happen. The Baker and his Wife need to gather ingredients in order to break the Witch’s curse that’s keeping them from conceiving: a cow as white as milk; a cape as red as blood; hair as yellow as corn; and a slipper as pure as gold. The Witch (Shawn Farrar) originally cast the spell to punish the Baker’s parents for raiding her garden. She took their firstborn, the Baker’s sister, named her Rapunzel (Shana Hammett) and hid her in a castle tower.

The songs in this act are revelatory. Little Red Riding Hood (Mary Alice Skalko), a sassy, strong-willed young girl who is tempted by the Wolf on her way to Granny’s house, realizes that her adventure in the woods has changed her. “And I know things now, many valuable things, that I hadn’t known before. Do not put your faith in a cape and a hood.... And though scary is exciting, nice is different than good.”

The sheer hilarity of Into the Woods cannot be overstated. Every actor plays up his or her funniest dialogue, the Princes (Bill Piper and Charlie Effler) in particular. One is smitten with Rapunzel in her tower; the other courts, then chases, Cinderella. Their song “Agony,” is a kind of one-upsmanship in who is pursuing the more difficult woman. “The harder to get, the better to have,” they agree, “What’s as intriguing—or half so fatiguing—as what’s out of reach?”

While the first act plays Six Degrees of Separation with fairy tale stars, the action doesn’t stray from the expectations of lore; their wishes come true with no harm done. Act II is a different story, one with a more horrific bent as the dead giant’s wife climbs down the beanstalk to seek revenge. Fulfilled wishes don’t mean the end of dissatisfaction, and characters with good intentions don’t escape consequences.

Here, as in literature of all ages, the forest is a symbol of danger, experience and loss of innocence. (The woods’ inherent mystery is represented by Christopher Pickart’s amazing set, which seems alive like the forest itself.) Knowledge and inevitable change isn’t good or bad, according to Sondheim’s characters, just necessary. In the end, they’ve been defeated, families torn apart. Their numbers are lessened. But they still have hope, faith in something better and more substantial than wishes. When the Baker and Cinderella sing, “Who can say what’s true? Nothing’s quite so clear now. Do things, fight things... Feel you’ve lost your way? You decide, but you are not alone,” the words and sentiment are a balm in confusing, frustrating times. Traditional fairy tales draw a distinct line between right and wrong, but Into the Woods responds to our morally ambiguous present. A play in itself may not make our world a better place, but it certainly helps us remember that some stories can have happy endings.

November 11, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 46 © 2004 Metro Pulse