This is ridiculous!
What am I doing here?
I'm in the wrong story!
"Into the Woods" is sometimes marketed for kids, though I don't think it's a kids' story. This is my problem with the movie. The movie seems to nail the First Act, which is easy to nail. It's pleasing, it ends with crisp resolutions, people behave as we expect them to behave (more or less).
But the Second Act is bizarre; it should be unapologetically bizarre. Maybe it should even feel stylistically separate, or detached, from Act One. The Baker's Wife cheats. The smart, sympathetic heroine "strays"--and it's not even with a great guy, but with a jackass, and BW maybe *recognizes* that the guy is a jackass. To me, the moment of BW's "transgression" is revolutionary for musical theater; it's maybe up there with the "bench scene" from "Carousel." You're just not prepared. In fact, you're prepared for the opposite, given that you've been treated to a charming Baker/BW love song, toward the end of Act One.
And then, as if liberated by this plot twist, Sondheim does something even more startling. He has the plucky, sympathetic heroine die--and die suddenly. Nothing sets you up for this moment. There isn't any foreshadowing. The music doesn't provide you with any subtextual hints. There isn't any justice or symmetry in the killing. It simply happens, and the story moves on. (I'm reminded of the murder of Janet Leigh, in "Psycho.")
I think Sondheim wants you to feel really shaken by these two events. And the movie doesn't really "go there." It glosses over the betrayal, and then it doesn't film the actual moment of death. There's a kind of wimpy, tasteful "drawing of the veil." This can't be what Sondheim intended. And in this moment of cowardice, the director loses a good deal of his credibility (if you ask me).
(You can do so many things with a camera that you can't do onstage. You can have a Giantess trample a human--and the action can seem believable, visually plausible. So why not make the effort?)
It's a cliche to point out that Sondheim loves elaborate games and puzzles. When he despaired, after the failure of "Merrily We Roll Along," it's said that he announced he intended to write a novel, a murder mystery. Puzzles, mysteries, math problems: These are small, sealed-off worlds with rules and tricks to be mastered, and they deliver satisfying moments of completion. Something is constructed. Something is solved. It's helpful to see Sondheim's musical-theater work as an extension of his puzzle love.
I think there's a tension, in "Woods," between Sondheim's desire to deliver an old-fashioned story and his desire to push boundaries. I see that in the very first moments of the show. "Once upon a time..." says the narrator, and we expect the big opening number, the scene-setting moment. This is the time for "O What a Beautiful Morning" or the title song from "Little Shop of Horrors." But Sondheim is impatient; he cuts off his own narrator. He has Jack cry, "I wish!" (This is Sondheim saying: Enough! Enough with dusty conventions!) You see Sondheim pushing back against expectations, once more, at the very end of the show: We believe we have arrived at a restful conclusion, and then Cinderella nervously shouts, "I Wish!"
You can hear Cinderella's self-directed exasperation in her voice; she wants to censor herself, even as she can't deny that she *does* have a new wish. Ambivalence! Cinderella even seems a bit queasy, in this moment. That's a classic bit of SS humor.
SS has said that his two most successful shows, in the afterlife of repertory, have been "Sweeney Todd" and "Into the Woods," though neither received uniformly positive reviews, upon opening on Broadway. He says this is because both shows deliver hearty plots; both are chock-full of curses and reverses; and if you startle and surprise your audience, then your audience will forgive a good deal of lumpiness. Fair enough.
An aspect of "Sweeney" that seems "Woods"-ian to me: The initial production apparently emphasized Marxist forces. There were cogs and machines. You were left to infer that the characters, like the cogs, were controlled by invisible forces. There maybe wasn't anything like free will. (The Tim Burton movie picked up on this theme, delightfully, in its opening sequence, by showing spinning gears; the liquid that lubricates the gears isn't oil, but thick, ketchupy, cartoonish, human blood.)
In both "Sweeney" and "Woods," there's a puppetmaster quality; someone is pulling strings. Sondheim seems to satirize that quality in various late Act One developments from "Woods": The cow is dead but can be magically resuscitated, a bit of cornsilk can pass for a maiden's hair, a case of blindness can be cured instantly by an ingenue's tears, a villain can encounter justice in the form of birds, who will helpfully pluck out a pair of eyes.
At the same time, in "Woods," there's that authorial restlessness. A desire to expand our understanding of what a story can be. After her shocking affair, BW tries to rationalize. This was a random, dismissable event. "That's what Woods are for--for those [atypical, forgivable] Moments in the Woods...." Except that Sondheim didn't write that first "Woods." Instead, he wrote: "That's what WOULDS are for--for those Moments in the Woods...." A WOULD is a plot that doesn't happen. It refers to a hypothetical, alternate world. It reminds us that the events we encounter every day are not foreordained; there are many other ways in which the story could play out.
Leave it to Sondheim to juggle all of these balls--to have all these questions and scenarios on his ever-active mind...
What am I doing here?
I'm in the wrong story!
"Into the Woods" is sometimes marketed for kids, though I don't think it's a kids' story. This is my problem with the movie. The movie seems to nail the First Act, which is easy to nail. It's pleasing, it ends with crisp resolutions, people behave as we expect them to behave (more or less).
But the Second Act is bizarre; it should be unapologetically bizarre. Maybe it should even feel stylistically separate, or detached, from Act One. The Baker's Wife cheats. The smart, sympathetic heroine "strays"--and it's not even with a great guy, but with a jackass, and BW maybe *recognizes* that the guy is a jackass. To me, the moment of BW's "transgression" is revolutionary for musical theater; it's maybe up there with the "bench scene" from "Carousel." You're just not prepared. In fact, you're prepared for the opposite, given that you've been treated to a charming Baker/BW love song, toward the end of Act One.
And then, as if liberated by this plot twist, Sondheim does something even more startling. He has the plucky, sympathetic heroine die--and die suddenly. Nothing sets you up for this moment. There isn't any foreshadowing. The music doesn't provide you with any subtextual hints. There isn't any justice or symmetry in the killing. It simply happens, and the story moves on. (I'm reminded of the murder of Janet Leigh, in "Psycho.")
I think Sondheim wants you to feel really shaken by these two events. And the movie doesn't really "go there." It glosses over the betrayal, and then it doesn't film the actual moment of death. There's a kind of wimpy, tasteful "drawing of the veil." This can't be what Sondheim intended. And in this moment of cowardice, the director loses a good deal of his credibility (if you ask me).
(You can do so many things with a camera that you can't do onstage. You can have a Giantess trample a human--and the action can seem believable, visually plausible. So why not make the effort?)
It's a cliche to point out that Sondheim loves elaborate games and puzzles. When he despaired, after the failure of "Merrily We Roll Along," it's said that he announced he intended to write a novel, a murder mystery. Puzzles, mysteries, math problems: These are small, sealed-off worlds with rules and tricks to be mastered, and they deliver satisfying moments of completion. Something is constructed. Something is solved. It's helpful to see Sondheim's musical-theater work as an extension of his puzzle love.
I think there's a tension, in "Woods," between Sondheim's desire to deliver an old-fashioned story and his desire to push boundaries. I see that in the very first moments of the show. "Once upon a time..." says the narrator, and we expect the big opening number, the scene-setting moment. This is the time for "O What a Beautiful Morning" or the title song from "Little Shop of Horrors." But Sondheim is impatient; he cuts off his own narrator. He has Jack cry, "I wish!" (This is Sondheim saying: Enough! Enough with dusty conventions!) You see Sondheim pushing back against expectations, once more, at the very end of the show: We believe we have arrived at a restful conclusion, and then Cinderella nervously shouts, "I Wish!"
You can hear Cinderella's self-directed exasperation in her voice; she wants to censor herself, even as she can't deny that she *does* have a new wish. Ambivalence! Cinderella even seems a bit queasy, in this moment. That's a classic bit of SS humor.
SS has said that his two most successful shows, in the afterlife of repertory, have been "Sweeney Todd" and "Into the Woods," though neither received uniformly positive reviews, upon opening on Broadway. He says this is because both shows deliver hearty plots; both are chock-full of curses and reverses; and if you startle and surprise your audience, then your audience will forgive a good deal of lumpiness. Fair enough.
An aspect of "Sweeney" that seems "Woods"-ian to me: The initial production apparently emphasized Marxist forces. There were cogs and machines. You were left to infer that the characters, like the cogs, were controlled by invisible forces. There maybe wasn't anything like free will. (The Tim Burton movie picked up on this theme, delightfully, in its opening sequence, by showing spinning gears; the liquid that lubricates the gears isn't oil, but thick, ketchupy, cartoonish, human blood.)
In both "Sweeney" and "Woods," there's a puppetmaster quality; someone is pulling strings. Sondheim seems to satirize that quality in various late Act One developments from "Woods": The cow is dead but can be magically resuscitated, a bit of cornsilk can pass for a maiden's hair, a case of blindness can be cured instantly by an ingenue's tears, a villain can encounter justice in the form of birds, who will helpfully pluck out a pair of eyes.
At the same time, in "Woods," there's that authorial restlessness. A desire to expand our understanding of what a story can be. After her shocking affair, BW tries to rationalize. This was a random, dismissable event. "That's what Woods are for--for those [atypical, forgivable] Moments in the Woods...." Except that Sondheim didn't write that first "Woods." Instead, he wrote: "That's what WOULDS are for--for those Moments in the Woods...." A WOULD is a plot that doesn't happen. It refers to a hypothetical, alternate world. It reminds us that the events we encounter every day are not foreordained; there are many other ways in which the story could play out.
Leave it to Sondheim to juggle all of these balls--to have all these questions and scenarios on his ever-active mind...
Comments
Post a Comment