D RA MAT URGS 'S N OT E Your Path Into the Woods in 2022 Fairytales and Open Interpretations Into the Woods premiered in 1986 at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego before it moved to Broadway the following year and became Sondheim’s most performed musical. It started as a staged reading Off-Broadway at a small theatre in New York (Playwrights Horizons), where the cast wore baseball caps with the characters’ names attached to them. They simply switched the cap when playing the double, and the piano bench they sat around became the horse, tree stump, and many other objects as needed. Such an unrealistic approach to stage representations befits the musical that combines different fairytales in one. Into the Woods employs the Grimm Brothers’ tales and weaves them together, where significant thematic and structural overlaps rise to the surface. The short and straightforward fairytales are full of symbols that explode in their full ambivalences and hidden connotations when they begin building relationships with each other. For instance, the tales in Into the Woods – Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Jack and the Beanstalk – all start in a domestic setting, and the protagonists go through a radical transformation when they break the boundaries of their familiar surroundings. As they confront the bigger world, the characters face life-threatening dangers that return with a reward when successfully overcome – whatever reward may mean. Cycle of Stories The new mesh of stories seems to bring the “dark” contents back to the story. For example, act II is full of deaths, fights, confrontations, and moral ambiguities, and yet, it ends with another “I wish…” that opens the show, creating a cycle of continued wishes, fulfillment, disappointment, and destruction. But, is this really dark? And is dark always bad?
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