Into the Woods
On November 5th, 1987, James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods opened for the first time (imagi-nation). Into The Woods, fairytale like in design, was a mix of, or a more appropriate term would be, a uniting of characters from Cinderella, Little Red Ridinghood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Rapunzel. Throughout this musical there are many underlined themes, but perhaps the biggest theme of all is that there is never truly a "Happily Ever After." Unlike most fairy tales you will see done by, say, Disney for example, Into The Woods focuses on the darker side of the story showing the consequences to actions, and that choices are not easy (Miler 111). Much like the musical The Fantasticks, the first half of the show tells a story that ends in a "happily ever after" type of feeling. In the second half, however, it goes from that happy feeling to a dark one telling of Cinderella's prince having an affair with the Bakers Wife, and the Giant's wife coming bake to avenge her husbands' death. It really gets into detail about the hard decisions the characters are forced to make throughout the rest of the musical, and it does make us ponder the question, "Is there ever really a happily ever after?"
n, I had to look into this a little harder to see if I could answer this question. Among many other things, Into The Woods really points out that there must be consequences to ones actions. In reality, life does not end once a person gets their wish. Like in the classic story The Little Mermaid, it does not end like in most of the cartoons of it. It ends with her killing herself in the end. It does not stop at the happy part of the story. Another example is in Rapunzel when the prince is blinded, which is also left out most of the time. By examining Into The Woods, we get the questions of, what does one do with a dead giant? Does marrying a prince really lead to happiness? Is carving up the wolf the solution in Little red Ridinghood (sondheim.com)? All these are choice that the characters made in their own stories that ended happy, but when you are forced to think about these questions you see that after that happy ending the characters will have to deal with the consequences of their actions. But sometimes dealing with consequences does not end happy either. The one problem that I had with this musical was that was, even though it does ask you if there ever really is a happily ever after, it seemed to end in sort of a happy mood. It ended with all the characters having learned a lesson and grown up a little. They all realized finally what life was about and although a lot o
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 935
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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