Sara Bareilles: "Into the Woods"

It's said that theater has only two kinds of songs: the "I Want" song and the "I Am" song. The distinction becomes blurry, but generally an "I Am" song is simply a self-portrait; it's not a declaration of "want."

A classic in the "I Am" bucket is "Mr. Cellophane," from Chicago. Another is "Cockeyed Optimist," from South Pacific.

If you're singing "I Am," you're reflecting on how you feel; you aren't focused on a specific thing that you desire.

This weekend, America will celebrate Into the Woods, which has a terrific "I Am" moment, a song called "It Takes Two." It's about a married couple taking new risks; emboldened by a quest, the wife interrupts the narrative to state some blunt truths about her husband....

You've changed.

You're daring.

You're different in the woods.

More sure--

More sharing.

You're getting us through the woods.

If you could see--

You're not the man who started...

And much more open-hearted...

Than I knew you to be...

The husband answers these lines with his own equally beautiful thought:

If I dare...

It's because I'm becoming aware of us....

As a pair of us...

Each accepting a share...

Of what's there.

We've changed.

We're strangers.

I'm meeting you in the woods.

Who minds?

What dangers?

I know we'll get past the woods...

The Sondheim cliche is that "a song is a one-act play." A change is indicated between the first and the last verse; often the change involves just one word. For example, "Finishing the hat" becomes "Look, I *made* a hat." And: a complaint ("Someone to hold you too close") becomes a prayer ("Somebody, hold me too close...")

In Woods, one sentence ("You've changed") becomes something quite different ("We've changed"). If half the marriage shifts, actually the entire marriage shifts. This is subtle and profound, and it gives me goosebumps.

Into the Woods just won a major Grammy Award, and it could (maybe) defeat the Groban Sweeney Todd as "Best Revival" this Sunday. Probably not. But I'm eager to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNknqYJaCkc

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