Publisher’s Review: Into the Woods

Fairy tales entertain and teach us by their use of metaphor, but Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1987 stage production of “Into the Woods” uses a unique approach — metaphor through song and verse. “Into the Woods” is an award-winning, fun, and dramatic mashup of several well-known and beloved fairy tales. However, Disney’s recent movie-musical adaptation is probably the most accurate I’ve ever seen, in both script and score.  And the blockbuster casting of a few characters certainly set the stage for an alluring night at the movies.

Cinderella is played by Anna Kendrick. Lilla Crawford plays Little Red Riding Hood, who is stalked by the well-played creepy Wolf, Johnny Depp. Rapunzel is played by MacKenzie Mauzy and the all-too-familiar Jack from “Jack and the Beanstalk” is played by Daniel Huttlestone, along with his mother, played by Tracey Ullman. The entire show is weaved together by an original story involving a baker and his wife, played by James Corden and Emily Blunt, whose life-long wish to have a child, a duty leads them to making a secret deal with the wicked witch, played by the amazingly talented Meryl Streep.

Cinderella’s Prince Charming and Rapunzel’s Prince are played by Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen, both handsome, shallow, stylish, self-absorbed, chivalrous, and chauvinistic pigs — I loved them!  And their princely duet of self-pity and martyrdom about their love lives was pure “agony,” but in a show-stealing, hilarious kind of way!

In doing a little research, I discovered that Jake Gyllenhaal was originally cast as Cinderella’s Prince Charming, something I would have liked to have seen. Gyllenhaal was unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps) offered the starring role in “Nightcrawler,” which preempted his role in “Into the Woods” and hit theaters in October earlier this year. Additionally, early attempts of adapting “Into the Woods” to film occurred in the early ’90s, with a script written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, and slated a cast that included Robin Williams as The Baker, Goldie Hawn as The Baker’s Wife, Cher as The Witch, Danny DeVito as The Giant, Steve Martin as The Wolf, and Roseanne Barr as Jack’s Mother.  An almost too grandiose, star-studded, comedic lineup would have undoubtedly made for a completely different final screen version had it actually been produced.

The Broadway musical production itself has, over the past 20 years, been reproduced by schools and community theaters hundreds, if not thousands of times. Lamentably, the pseudo role of the Giant has always seemed to bring a spurious air to every stage performance, but in the movie and in true Disney fashion, the Giant is ominously life-like.

So whether you’re an avid theater goer or just someone that likes to see a good movie, “Into the Woods” should find its way to your must see list.