"American Playhouse" Into the Woods (1991)

Director:

James Lapine

Writer:

James Lapine (book)

TV Series:

"American Playhouse" (1982)

Original Air Date:

20 March 1991 (Season 10, Episode 5)

Genre:

Biography | Drama

Plot:

In this Tony Award-winning musical by Stephen Sondheim, several fairy tale characters learn the hard way that the 'Happily Ever After' they sought isn't necessarily so happy after all.

Plot Keywords:

Baker | Giant | Witch | Cow | Cinderella

Awards:

Nominated for Primetime Emmy.

Cast

Bernadette Peters	...	The Witch
Chip Zien	...	Baker
Joanna Gleason	...	Baker's wife
Tom Aldredge	...	Narrator / Mysterious Man
Robert Westenberg	...	Wolf / Cinderella's Prince
Kim Crosby	...	Cinderella
Danielle Ferland	...	Little Red Riding Hood
Ben Wright	...	Jack
Barbara Bryne	...	Jack's mother
Merle Louise	...	Grandmother / Cinderella's Mother / Giant
Chuck Wagner	...	Rapunzel's Prince
Pamela Winslow	...	Rapunzel
Philip Hoffman	...	Steward
Lauren Mitchell	...	Lucinda
Kay McClelland	...	Florinda
Edmund Lyndeck	...	Cinderella's father
Joy Franz	...	Cinderella's stepmother
Cindy Robinson	...	Snow White
Maureen Davis	...	Sleeping Beauty

Directed by
James Lapine

Writing credits
James Lapine		(book)

Produced by
Michael Brandman	....	executive producer
Iris Merlis	....	producer

Film Editing by
Girish Bhargava

Casting by
Joanna Merlin

Production Design by
Tony Straiges

Costume Design by
Sue Blane

Stunts
B.H. Barry	....	fights

Camera and Electrical Department
Danny Franks	....	tv lighting
Richard Nelson	....	stage lighting

Costume and Wardrobe Department
Ann Hould-Ward	....	original costume concepts
Patricia Zipprodt	....	original costume concepts

Editorial Department
Bill Stephan	....	on-line editor

Music Department
Paul Gemignani	....	conductor
Lar Lubovitch	....	musical staging
Stephen Sondheim	....	music and lyrics by
Jonathan Tunick	....	orchestrator

Other crew
James Lapine	....	directed for stage
Iris Merlis	....	stage manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Thomas Herod Jr.	....	first assistant director (episode "Land of Little Rain" (1989), The")

Music Department
Michael Small	....	composer: theme music

Production Companies

• Brandman Productions

Distributors

• American Playhouse
• Image Entertainment (USA) (DVD)
• Image Entertainment (USA) (VHS)

Runtime:

USA:153 min (VHS version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:Unrated

Filming Locations:

Martin Beck Theatre, 302 W. 45th Street, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Brandman Productions

Trivia:

The original Broadway production of "Into the Woods" opened at the Martin Beck Theater in New York on November 5, 1987, ran for 765 performances and won the 1988 Tony Awards for the Best Book and Score. The original Broadway cast is virtually intact for this filmed production which included Joanna Gleason, the winner of the 1988 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical and Robert Westenberg, the nominee for the 1988 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.

Quotes:

Little Red Riding Hood:[to Cinderella] You can talk to birds?

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "The Nostalgia Teen: The Rugrats Movie (#1.1)" (2011)

Soundtrack:

On the Steps of the Palace

What happens after "Happily ever after?"

One of the great Stephen Sondheim's last great musicals combines four favorite fairy tales to make one classical epic: "Cinderella," "Jack & The Beanstalk," "Little Red Riding-Hood," and "Rapunzel." A fifth story is, of course, needed to bind them together, which comes here in the story of a poor baker and his wife who wish for a child, and to get it, strike a bargain with a witch to fetch the ingredients for a potion: "The cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, and the slippers as pure as gold." The baker rescues

Red Riding-Hood from the wolf and is rewarded with her cloak, and then sells

the beans to Jack for his cow, while his wife plucks a hair from Rapunzel in her tower, and relieves Cinderella of her last shoe, since she is having trouble

escaping in one high-heeled slipper. Over the first act, we see the stories unfold just as we know them from our childhood, ending with "Happily ever after." In the second act, however, the characters' continuing stories are shown as not as

happy as we thought. Cinderella and Rapunzel's princes have lost their hearts' desires in the having of them, and start chasing after Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Red Riding-Hood has become obsessed with killing wolves, and

defending herself. Rapunzel, simultaneously missing her Witch-mother and

hating her, has moments of hysteria. As for the Baker, he feels insecure as a father, and his wife wishes their house were bigger. And the Giant's wife comes down another beanstalk to get revenge on Jack for murdering her husband.

Disaster strikes when, in desparation, the characters sacrifice the Narrator to the Giant, and thus destroy the person keeping the stories in order. Chaos ensues as the black and white so well divided before flow together. Heroes lie, Witches are right, Giants are good, heroes die. But still, the characters are able to stay together and defeat the giant and resolve their stories on their own. The moral of the story is simple: Learn from the stories, but don't live by them, as sung by the legendary Bernadette Peters as the Witch. She proves amazingly good at

playing the hideous old crone, and later becomes more of a Gothic beauty,

more suited to her beautiful voice and fantastic acting skills (Last Midnight, who would have thought a waltz could be so chilling?) The rest of the original

Broadway cast is also fabulous. Danielle Ferland is delightful as Red Riding- Hood, a Shirley Temple with a delightful mean streak. Robert Westenberg

makes the Prince funny and sad, and as the Wolf, brings out the lustful

undertones of the character, and Chip Zien and Joanna Gleason evoke

memories of Desi and Lucy as the married couple, while Kim Crosby is a

surprisingly independent Cinderella. All the cast sings one of Sondheim's

strongest scores, and brings the musical into the range of 10/10.