Word: sondheimer
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...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 before, Into the Woods is the best show yet from the most creative mind...
Into the Woods cannot change the situation by itself or even by example. For one thing, imitation is a less viable route to success in the theater than in prime-time TV. For another, only Sondheim is Sondheim. Says Composer- Lyricist Jerry Herman, author of La Cage aux Folles and Hello, Dolly: "We would all agree that Steve is the genius of the group, the one who keeps on taking the musical theater to new places." What Into the Woods does, gloriously, is make the case for what musicals might be, blending innovation and old-fashioned storytelling into an elixir...
...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...
...hands of panicky fellow citizens. Yet what comes out of this chaos is not the jollity of happy endings but a deeper reassurance, born of tolerance and community and shared sacrifice, articulated in the haunting ballad No One Is Alone -- a song as tuneful and touching as Sondheim's Send in the Clowns, but deeper and richer in meaning...
Cinderella, Rapunzel and Little Red Ridinghood meet in Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim' s brilliant new Broadway musical...