Act Two Breakdowns

This post will close out October for us as story addicts. But before we look toward November and what we will discover looking at The Return of the King, let’s talk about what I’ve been promising you all month: let’s go more detailed with the plot of act two of Into the Woods.

There’s a lot to dig into here, so I’m just going to dive in and hit the ground running. In act one, all of our fairytale favorites went on a trek through the woods to find what they’re looking for. For the most part, the downfalls of these characters go mostly untested in the first act. There are moments for all of them when they have to realize that their shortcomings are there, but during the first act, they are all able to find ways around their problems. Of course, as humans, they choose the ways around their problems instead of doing the hard thing and working to correct the problems they see in themselves. Cinderella decides to make the Prince make a decision instead of doing it herself, Red resolves to do better next time because she’s already faced the consequences of some decisions she’s made, Jack thinks he’s made things right by slaying the giant who dared chase him for stealing, the Baker relents to what his Wife wants, and in turn the Baker’s Wife isn’t forced to change either. All the characters think they have made some grand change because they successfully went on a journey to get their wish.

Act two is there to prove them wrong.

When a vengeance-driven giant (who happens to be the wife of the giant Jack killed) tramples their kingdom in search of Jack, the characters are really forced to do something. This time they move into the woods out of necessity, not desire. In this trip, they each grow in personal ways, but they grow in such a way as to benefit a main theme as well. As far as personally changing goes, Cinderella is forced into reality when she discovers her husband is cheating on her. Red learns that the world she was so confident in bossing around can change in an instant through losing her mother when their house collapses and then not being able to find her grandmother’s house anymore. Jack realizes that even though he was doing it to better his and his mother’s lives, his decision to steal has potentially dire consequences. The Baker (slowly but surely) finds that sometimes there is no place for fear unless you’re running away, and that is by far the worst option. He takes so long to learn this lesson, however, that it drives his wife away. She, in the meantime and after making some major mistakes of her own, learns that you can’t live in two worlds at once and resolves to do better. Unfortunately she never gets the chance.

The giant that has come down to the far-away fairytale kingdom is demanding to see Jack so she can kill him, and is destroying things and people on her way to getting to him. Everyone’s morals are tested big time, and everyone is coming up with a different answer of what to do. Almost everyone either dies or runs away by the time we’ve arrived at the second-to-last musical number, and that song is fittingly filled with Cinderella and the Baker (two of the most indecisive people in the show) passing down what they’ve learned about life to Red and Jack. The main theme of the song is the main theme of the show: no one can make decisions in your life for you. Together, but not all quite sure of the morals of the situation, they are able to take down the giant.

This show is incredibly profound in this way: just as soon as you think the characters have all the happy endings they could hope for, you realize that it’s only intermission. As soon as they step back on stage, they’re filled with more wishes and problems, all bigger than they ever were before. You can even see the difference from the beginning of act two to the end in the lyrics. In the first song of act two a character sings “Into the woods, it’s always when/you think at last you’re through, and then/into the woods you go again/to take another journey.” But in the final number, the chorus sings “Into the woods, you have to grope/’but that’s the way you learn to cope./Into the woods, to find there’s hope/of getting through the journey.” The difference is inspiring, and I hope you’ve come to appreciate the depths of this musical like I do.

In just a few days it’ll be November, and with it comes going back to The Lord of the Rings to wrap up our series on it! Come back this Friday as we kick off the new month with a look at one of the most unexpected friendships in the trilogy!

The Baker’s Wife

As we start the last Friday post of October, we’re going to take a closer look at a character we’ve only mentioned so far. She’s an integral part of the Baker’s story, but has a lot of her own story happening too. The Baker’s Wife, although unnamed other than her previously stated title, deserves a character assessment of her own. Let’s giver her a fair look today before the month’s totally through and see what we can learn from her!

For the first act of the musical Into the Woods, the Baker’s Wife has the same goal as her husband. They both want to have a child; they’ve wanted one for a while, the musical implies. But the key difference here is how they are willing to go about getting a child once the Witch tells them what they must do to achieve their goal. The Baker wants to retrieve the potion ingredients alone, thinking that it is solely his burden to bear. However, his wife believes that they have to go about it together. A good deal of their first act arcs are based around this disagreement, but more importantly, the Baker strongly believes that they should not go about lifting the curse with any kind of deceit. His wife… not so much. To the Baker’s Wife, what her goal is what’s most important, and therefore, any means by which she can achieve it is acceptable. Lying, stealing, and heavy persuasion are all parts of the deal for her, and she’s willing to sacrifice all morals that stop her from doing these things to get her child.

Surprisingly, her methods work. She eventually convinces her husband to do whatever seems necessary in the moment to get the Witch’s ingredients, and they successfully get their child. But it’s the unforeseen consequences of adding another person to their household that throw them for a loop in act two. They need more room, but that struggle seems incredibly small next to what they are faced with when a giant enters their kingdom. They quickly take on the role of caregivers for Red Riding Hood, as she comes to their door saying that her house caved in and she couldn’t find her mother afterward. As they travel throughout act two, the pair is put under more pressure and the unity that they found in act one starts to crumble.

This is what drives the Baker’s Wife to seeking solitude from her husband for a moment; she suggests that they split up and look for Jack (who the giant wants for revenge purposes-but more on that on Monday). When she does, however, she meets the unfaithful husband of Cinderella, otherwise known as the crown prince. He, looking for a cheap thrill, tempts the Baker’s Wife with an offer of pleasure, and she, feeling subconsciously distant from her husband, gives in and gives the prince what he’s looking for. Immediately after this, however, the prince abandons her, leaving her to question her morals once again. This time she decides that bad decisions have a place, and that she’s ready to make the right ones now-just as she is killed by falling into one of the craters created by the giant’s foot.

To me, the lesson we learn from the Baker’s Wife is that we have to make every moment count, for any action could be our last. Her last moments were filled with infidelity and forgetting of the life she claimed to love and instead being swept up into a world of being loved by a royal-a world that wasn’t hers. Those were her last choices; she never saw her child or husband again, leaving them to mourn her loss. This is only a sneak peak of what happens in act two, however. Join us on Monday for the last post of October as we explore ant two more thoroughly!

Seeing Doubles

There are certain advantages that telling a story through a stage production has over a written story or a film. We’ve talked about a few of these advantages in the past, such as being more free to use music in the storytelling and allowing the audience to experience the story in real time. We haven’t touched on one in particular, though, and that’s the beauty of double casting an actor. In a book, there are no actors (save the reader’s imagination), and it’s very rare to see double casting in a film, although it is there. When it does appear in a cinematic setting, however, it is much for the same reasons as we see on stage (think The Wizard of Oz). The point of double casting an actor of an actress is, for the most part, symbolism. There are some double castings that just exist to decrease the number of cast members required, as seen in Cinderella’s mother being portrayed by the same woman who voices the giant in act two. But there are two other double castings in Into the Woods that I want to look at today that hold much more meaning behind them.

It may have been hard to tell from behind his mask and heavy costuming, but when the Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood stepped onto the stage, we were actually seeing the same man who brings Cinderella’s prince to life. We’ve talked about how Cinderella’s prince falters in his faithfulness in act two, ending things with Cinderella with the line “I was raised to be charming, not sincere”. But when you recognize the other role that this actor portrays, you begin to see the similarities between the two. Both seek to capture a woman, whether actually capturing her or capturing her heart, or for his own ends. The Wolf wants a meal, and the prince wants a wife. They both go about achieving their goals in eerily similar ways as well; manipulation. Both Red and Cinderella are convinced that their deceiver is kind and is looking out for them. In the end, however, each deception is revealed.

The other double casted actor may have also evaded being noticed. Noticed or not, he was there: the Narrator was the same man as the Mysterious Man (who ended up revealing himself to be the Baker’s father). If we view the characters in this light, it becomes clear that the Baker had more in common with his father than he ever thought possible. On top of wanting to run away when things got hard for his family, when the Baker returns, he resolves to tell his son the story of how everything happened-the same thing that his father does the entire time as the narrator! In this sense, then, we truly get to see the Baker growing into his father’s shoes.

This Friday, we’re going to jump into our last character analysis of October, which will center around the Baker’s Wife. Come next week Monday, however, we will close out October with setting out to unravel act two and all its twists and turns. Stick around for what we’ve still got to uncover before heading back into The Lord of the Rings!

The Baker

On Monday we spent our time looking at how the classic story Rapunzel was re-imagined for Into the Woods. One of the crucial areas that was different from the original telling was that Rapunzel had a brother, according to the musical. Surprisingly enough, the Broadway show spends far more time telling her brother’s story, the Baker, than it does with Rapunzel herself. Rapunzel’s life becomes more of a subplot, more secondary to that of the Baker’s. But both of their stories are deeply intertwined with that of the Witch, so let’s spend some time with the Baker’s story today.

From the opening number till the end of act one, the Baker has one goal: he wants to have a child. He and his wife have been trying to achieve this goal, but to no avail. This is when the Witch informs them that they have been unsuccessful due to a curse she put on the Baker’s father’s family when she took the Baker’s sister, Rapunzel. She offers, however, to reverse the curse if they bring her the ingredients to a spell. The Baker and his wife don’t stop to question why the Witch would need such a thing; they are too happy at the promise of finally getting the child that they’ve been longing for. But the Baker soon insists that he take on this quest alone, believing that since his house was the one that was cursed he alone should be held accountable. His wife argues with this, saying that this is now her family too-but the Baker refuses to accept her help and sets out on his own.

Throughout act one, this is the main theme of the Baker’s story: his stubbornness. The main arc here involves him hitting a brick wall trying to do everything on his own and slowly coming to accept that he needs help. We also see him growing in other areas; he has to learn to viciously go after what he wants or else he will never get it. But when we come to act two, the tables have turned. Now the happy pair has their child, and they are cramped in the cottage that used to hold their family perfectly. But what’s worse is that the Baker has become too dependent on his wife now. He is convinced that their son doesn’t want to be cared for by him, as the baby cries whenever he holds him. But this puts his wife in great distress, as she tries to tell him when she says “I cannot care for him all of the time!”. The Baker has to learn to cope and care for the child on his own when the events of act two end up killing his wife.

This is where we really see the heart of the Baker. At first, he tries to run away, just like his own father abandoned him. But after reconsidering, and recognizing the impact that will have on his son, he thinks better of it. He returns to the group of misfits that he left his child with and resolves to help them kill the giant despite his distress. When all is said and done, he still faces the same question: “How do I go about being a father with no one to mother my child?” But after looking to the examples set for him in his late wife, we see him start to figure out parenthood.

There is important symmetry found in the story of the Baker, but seeing as we haven’t explored the other story line that creates this symmetry we can’t quite see it yet. On this coming Monday, however, we will solve that problem and answer a question that may have been bothering you since you watched Into the Woods-join us as we look at a peculiar storytelling tool unique to stage plays!

Rapunzel

Rapunzel is another one of those classic tales that’s been retold countless times, most recently in Disney’s animated film Tangled. While the movie was very well received and cherished, the story was changed to fit the needs of the storyteller. This is fine, but as we look at Into the Woods, we need to remember the original story to understand the version of the story that the musical shows us.

In the original version of Rapunzel, Rapunzel is not a princess. She is the daughter of two poor commoners who happen to live next door to a witch. While Rapunzel’s mother is pregnant, she begins craving green vegetables, and to satisfy her wishes, her husband attempts to steal some from their neighbor’s garden, not realizing she is a witch. When he is caught, he rashly agrees to give his child to the witch as payment as soon as it is born. When the child is born, despite its parents’ pleading, the witch takes him up on his promise, and whisks the little girl away to a tower deep in the forest to keep as her own. Eventually, her hair grows long enough to reach the bottom of the tower when flung out the window, and Rapunzel’s singing attracts a young, handsome prince to her side. They escape together, but not before the witch discovers them and blinds the prince for his trespassing and thievery.

All of these core elements are present in Into the Woods, but what separates the tellings of the story is the additions that the musical makes to the popular fairytale. Rapunzel’s parents already had a child, according to the musical of the month, who would grow up to be a baker. We will look at his character more closely this Friday. The witch also cursed Rapunzel’s family as a whole due to her father stealing magical beans, says Into the Woods. There is a whole story line about how the witch’s mother cursed her from beyond the grave for losing the magical beans, causing her to be the old, ugly witch we see at the beginning of the story.

As a matter of fact, the witch herself is the most changed element of Rapunzel that we see when looking at this version of the story. Into the Woods focuses more on the witch’s story than Rapunzel’s; so much so that it is fair to say that Rapunzel is just a piece of the witch’s story, and not the other way around. They explore the witch’s character so deeply, making her fascinating. In the first act, the witch is dead set on one goal: lifting the curse placed on her so she can be young and beautiful again. She even forsakes other precautions and goals, such as giving Rapunzel the love and attention she needs. At the end of the first act, we see why the witch wanted the spell reversed so badly-she thought it would make Rapunzel love her more. When this fails, the witch is furious, and tries to curse her daughter, but finds that the price for getting her youth and beauty back was her magic abilities.

This unexpected price tag causes the witch to be even more bitter in act two. But like any well-written character, she is three-dimensional and not just bitter. She still shows a fierce love for her daughter, and her beliefs about what to do with the giant tend to revolve around her ideologies about a mother’s love. We will examine this side of the witch closer soon. In the meantime, join us as we look at the brother Rapunzel never knew she had-Friday is reserved for the Baker!

Red Riding Hood

When playing any role on stage, or in a film, really, an actor or an actress has room for something called ‘interpretation’. I see this especially highlighted in the role of Little Red Riding Hood from Into the Woods. Her lines are so open to add inflection and facial expressions that it can be spun countless ways, all of them lovable and hilarious. When watching the filming of Into the Woods from Broadway, you can see that the actress in the role of Red chose, more often than not, a snarky, self-inflated characterization to use with her role. I think this works very well for Red, especially when interacting with some other characters. Let’s take a closer look and talk about why I feel that way.

To give a little girl snark, but still preserve the unwitting innocence (at the start of things, anyways) is quite a feat. But it comes down to one simple thought process that, in this interpretation of her, the character obviously possesses: over-confidence. She thinks she knows everything there is to know, thus fueling her decisions to stray from the path her mother cautioned her to stay on, shamelessly taking more than what was needed from the baker and his wife, and egging Jack on about saying there was a kingdom of giants in the sky. She is, in this way, the opposite of Jack’s childishness; for in his childishness he doubts himself, but in her over-confidence she inflates herself far beyond what she should’ve been.

Another important thing to note about Red is her relationship to the woods themselves. Unlike the others in the story, who have always had a fearful reverence regarding the woods, she travels through them on a regular basis. She doesn’t believe she has anything to fear because there was nothing to fear the last time she went. She has fallen into a trap of false security, and that leads her into more than one snare throughout the musical. In the first act, it’s presuming she knows the woods well enough to trust the wolf and stray from her path; in the second, it’s not knowing what to do when the ‘security’ of that path is gone.

Once again, the tale of Little Red Riding Hood was not twisted or changed terribly in the first act of the musical. Act two, however, is a different story (literally), and we are getting closer to unraveling the mess that it is. In the meantime, however, we will look at a tale that was changed quite dramatically for Into the Woods: join us on Monday as we dive into Rapunzel!

Jack and the Beanstalk

To keep things moving this month, we won’t linger on individual characters or story lines very long at first. Which means that today, instead of continuing our analysis of Cinderella and her surrounding characters, we’re switching gears and examining Jack and the Beanstalk. When you line up the original tale with the version found in Into the Woods, you find that there aren’t that many differences. Jack still lives with his mother in poverty, and is forced by his mother to sell his beloved cow to get some much-needed money. He foolishly accepts ‘magic’ beans as payment for the animal, and when in anger his mother flings the beans to the ground, a gigantic beanstalk grows up as a result overnight. Jack adventurously climbs the beanstalk that’s appeared in his yard, and comes back with fantastical treasures from a realm of giants who live in the clouds. On his last trip down the stalk, however, he is pursued by a wrathful giant, and cuts down the beanstalk just in time to crush the giant under its weight, effectively killing him.

All of this did indeed happen in Into the Woods. The main difference was, however, that characters from other stories influenced Jack’s actions. It was the baker, who we will be discussing later this month, who bought Jack’s cow for five magical beans. It was Little Red Ridinghood, who’s set to be the topic of our discussion this Friday, who dared Jack to prove that there actually was a kingdom of giants up in the sky by going and stealing far more riches than he needed to for his wellbeing. Jack also gets wrapped up in the politics of their own stories, but that’s a post for another day.

Jack’s relationship with his mother is highly pronounced in Into the Woods. They argue frequently, showing us that they clearly don’t agree on how Jack’s life should be lived. Jack and his mother represent two opposing views: realism and idealism. His mother, the realist of the two, sees only the hardship in their situation. In this case, I completely see where she’s coming from; the small family has nothing. Jack’s father has abandoned them, and it appears that they have no source of income. Oblivious to these harsh realities, however, Jack was happy to daydream his days away, and it was driving his mother mad. This idealism manifests itself in Jack as childishness; we see this as the story moves along. He gets into petty arguments with Red, is more attached to his cow than he should’ve been, and is obstinate and stubborn about all sorts of things. Throughout the story, we see their views clash time and time again, but what always reveals itself over everything else is their love for each other. In the second act, Jack’s mother actually dies defending Jack. Though there are other parent/child relationships between characters in the show, none are shown to be anywhere near as loving as the pair of Jack and his mother.

Cinderella

Cinderella is a classic fairytale known by children everywhere and beloved by all who’ve heard it. There are countless variations and takes and remakes of the story, one of them being featured in Into the Woods. In some aspects, the version presented in this musical holds true to the traditional telling, but in other respects, it’s wildly different. Let’s look at similarities first. Cinderella has indeed lost her mother, and her father has remarried a wicked woman with two horrible daughters. Cinderella does want to go to the king’s ball, and meets the prince there and falls in love. Using her shoe, the prince finds Cinderella after she flees the ball, and they are married. However, the dissimilarities are many and create a totally different story. Cinderella’s father is still alive, but is negligent despite this. Her dead mother is the one that grants her supplies with which to attend the ball, not a Fairy Godmother. The ball spans three evenings; Cinderella flees after each night, but on the third night, the prince puts tar on the stairs to prevent her escape. She still makes it out-but leaves him a shoe to see what he’ll do on one small lead. After all that, the prince cheats on her, finding himself unable to stop his flirtatious, charming ways.

That’s not even counting all the interactions with characters outside of the original Cinderella story!

Towards the end of the month, we’re going to look at how all the stories intertwine more carefully. But let’s start off easy today; let’s spend some time on Cinderella’s character. One of the main themes that Cinderella brings to our attention is the consequences of indecisiveness and not knowing what you want. From the beginning, her mother counseled her to seriously consider whether or not going to the royal ball was truly her heart’s wish. Cinderella did not heed her mother’s words, and when she starting getting attention she wasn’t expecting, she didn’t know what to do or what to think. She runs from making decisions for herself (literally), and will only admit to being the one who loves the prince when basically forced to-all because she doesn’t know what she wants.

Another trait that is often shown in Cinderella re-tellings is her innocence, which manifests itself in this show as what I like to call stubborn innocence. This is mainly visible in two things: her indecisiveness itself, and how she interacts with the prince throughout the show. The constant indecisiveness and changing mind of Cinderella show us that she doesn’t have the maturity to be very self-aware, at least, not in any ways that help her with her decisions. She relies on others to make the best decisions for her that can be made-a method which proves faulty. Her interactions with the prince, namely when it’s revealed that he’s been cheating on her also show us this stubborn innocence. She doesn’t want to believe it. Not her prince. Not the man she married. Her goodbye remark to him (”And I [will always love] the far-away prince”) highlights this perfectly. That love persists, despite the innocence being broken enough that she casts him out.

Unfortunately, we don’t have enough time in the month to spend much more of it on Cinderella individually. We will touch on her story later, though, when worlds collide and stories’ happy endings fall apart. For this Monday, however, we’re moving on to another classic tale that’s been warped to meet the show’s needs; come back then as we dissect Jack and the Beanstalk!

Twisted Tales

Welcome to October, story addicts! I know we’re all on the edge of our seats to dive into the final segment of The Lord of the Rings, but as always, we’re taking a step back and looking at a different story to give ourselves a change of scenery for a month. This time around, we’re going to talk about another musical-who’s familiar with Into the Woods? If you’re not, I recommend renting or purchasing the filming of the Broadway production and not the movie version. For one, the musical production is far the movie’s superior, and two, I will be basing my analysis on the stage production.

For those not familiar with Into the Woods, let’s spend today laying the groundwork for the story. Set in a fairytale kingdom on the edge of mysterious woods, it’s a land where several of the world’s favorite stories exist in the same realm at the same time. Tales like Cinderella, Little Red Ridinghood, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty feature characters that, in this musical, co-exist and go on adventures that intertwine beautifully. It explores what would happen should the far-off kingdoms of fairytale glory were the same kingdom, and the result is fascinating. We will be looking at how these stories meld together extensively on Mondays during October.

The other big ticket item that I want to touch on before getting into the story itself is the symbolism characterized in the woods of Into the Woods themselves. In one respect, they represent uncertainty and the unknown. The characters, in one way or another, are forced to embark on a trek through the woods if they want to see their wishes come true, which symbolizes us as people having to venture into the unknown and uncomfortable to achieve our goals. The woods in this story are also a mysterious place, ever changing and confusing the paths of the heroes, which leads us to the conclusion that the woods also symbolize the change that the characters are forced to go through and to bring upon their lives over the course of the story. Also taking into accounts the events of act two, which we will look at in depth later on this month, the woods give us an important message: the trials we face in life are not a one-and-done affair. You have to go “into the woods” more than once in life, so you have to be ready when life pushes you in that direction. The woods have other, smaller roles, but we will discuss them more when we come across them.

As we explore Into the Woods coming month, keep the things we talked about today in mind, and we will understand the events of the story much better. Buckle your seatbelts and get ready for the ride; there’s some twists coming that will take a lot of picking apart-but we’re up to the challenge!