Word: jacked
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Into the Woods is a musical fairy tale in which Jack, of beanstalk fame; Little Red Ridinghood; Cinderella, Rapunzel and their respective princes; Sleeping Beauty; Snow White -- and, of course, a wicked witch and a menacing giant -- are living out their stories in the same forest at the same time, bumping into each other and entangling one another's narratives. As funny as Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, as musical as his A Little Night Music, as morally inflamed as his Sweeney Todd, yet more forgiving and affirmative than anything he has written...
...show's first image is a curtain imprinted with pages from three fables about magical keys to happiness: Cinderella, which in this interpretation concerns the illusory promises of perfect love; Jack and the Beanstalk, in which Sondheim and Lapine see a quest for the fool's gold of material conquest; and an invented tale called The Baker and His Wife, about a couple who long to escape the curse of childlessness inflicted by the "witch next door." Inasmuch as the holy grails that will lift the witch's spell are Jack's beloved white cow, Little Red Ridinghood's crimson...
...they don't. The widow of a giant slain by Jack shows up to exact revenge and drives everyone back into the woods (mystical and eerie in Tony Straiges' design, spellbound in Richard Nelson's storybook-colored lighting). The threat she poses has been likened by some critics to nuclear war or AIDS; the rampant selfishness that soon erupts in the face of trouble is, the producers admit, meant as a subtle protest against the self-congratulatory individualism of the Reagan era. But with or without allusive implications, the story jolts its passive characters -- and spectators -- into a world where...
...outward appearances, the surviving characters are alone. Vague, pixilated Jack (Ben Wright) no longer has his nudging mother (Barbara Bryne). Tough and fearless Ridinghood (Danielle Ferland) no longer has either her granny or her sexually seductive wolf (Robert Westenberg, who doubles brilliantly as the prince to Kim Crosby's klutzy, endearingly otherworldly Cinderella). The sweet little baker (Chip Zien) has lost his wife (Joanna Gleason, in the most beguiling performance of a superb cast). Even the witch (Bernadette Peters) has stormed off in rage at the collective dithering. But in the aftermath of havoc, households re-form, and life, better...
...when the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Affairs opened hearings in Washington to probe U.S. Government loans to Hull and examine charges that contra suppliers operating from Hull's ranches had been flying shipments of cocaine and marijuana into the U.S. Said Subcommittee Special Counsel Jack Blum: "We will continue hearings into the question of how the ((contras')) war was used as a cover for narcotics operations...