Into the Woods was a great musical comedy, in my opinion. It smashed together five fairy tales: Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Baker and his Wife, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood.
There were an array of characters, but the ones that stuck out the most to me were Jack (from Jack and the Beanstalk) and the baker (from the Baker and his Wife). Jack, naturally, represents the fool. He goes through life with all the happiness in the world, with his best friend, Milkywhite, the cow, by his side. Then his mother tells him he must sell Milkywhite so they could have food. Jack wanders off into the woods, and comes across the baker, sells Milkywhite for five magical beans. (He sold Milkywhite with all intentions of getting him back.) Jack went and planted the beans, and a beanstalk grew out of the ground and into the sky. Jack climbs said beanstalk, finds giants, and starts stealing from them, thinking nothing bad would happen. (and we all know how that turned out, don’t we?)
The baker is the warrior. He goes into the woods looking for ridiculous items that no one in their right mind would ever find in three days, and yet, somehow, he manages. He is only looking out for his wife, who really wants to have a child, and so does he. So he sets off into the woods looking for a cow as white as milk, a shoe as good as gold, hair as yellow as corn, and a cape as red as blood. In the end, he finds them all, feeds them to a cow, and gets his wish. Throughout the entire musical, his wife is following him, and he keeps telling her to go back to the house. He is trying to protect her and do what is right — find these ridiculous items so that they can lift the curse brought on by his father, so they could start a family.
The use of music in Into the Woods really kept it moving. If this didn’t have music, the play would have taken forever to finish. When a character sang, they didn’t only say what they were doing, or trying to accomplish, they were also expressing how they were feeling. You could tell that the witch was sad when she was singing to Rapunzel, trying to get her to stay with her and not venture off into the world. It also transitioned the play very well, from act to act and scene to scene. You often saw one person end a song, another person run out and start a song, while the one who just finished the song ran off backstage.
Another thing that music did for the play was foreshadow, just a little bit, and you had to think about it too. Like when Jack first announced that there were giants in the sky, you almost got the feeling that this wasn’t the last you were going to see or hear about the giants. And when the baker and the Witch sang about the beans, you knew that they were very important for the duration of the play.
I think that Into the Woods offers many lessons. One of them is that not every story will have a ‘happily ever after’ just like they do in most fairytales or movies that we see on television. Not everyone is going to find a ‘happily ever after.’ I know it’s not what people want to hear, but i’m sorry, it’s true.
It also tells you to stay straight and narrow on the path (Little Red Riding Hood’s song actually became a lesson!) If you don’t, you’re probably going to lose your way, someone probably will get hurt, and it might take you awhile to get back on track.
Don’t get greedy and don’t take what isn’t yours is another lesson Into the Woods teaches the kiddies. We all saw the consequences that Jack had to face after he stole things from the giants, but he also made everyone else suffer from his mistakes. If you take something that’s not yours, you’ll probably get caught, and you’ll end up dragging the people you love the most into it, and then they’ll get pissed off, and people will fight, and it’s just not pretty. Just stick to what’s yours, or ask to borrow it, or something. Just don’t resort to stealing.
One of the last ones that stuck out to me was brought by the baker. If you stick things out, no matter how hard they are, they’re going to be okay in the end. Maybe not great or ‘happily ever after,’ but you’re going to make it.
The poem that I found that went along with the lessons learned was Still here by Langston Hughes. It talks about a person who has been through hell, has been broken and battered, but he’s still there. Just like the baker was after his wife died. At first he ran from his son, but then he realized that he needed to be there for his son, and he went back and stuck it out.
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