Into the Woods

Into the Woods, witty and whimsical stage musical by composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim and playwright-director James Lapine that combines the plots of familiar fairy tales. A dark comedy, the story of Into the Woods takes inspiration from the more melancholy and frightful elements of original folk and fairy tales—including the deaths of major characters—and features plot elements and figures from the stories of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel. Into the Woods premiered in 1986 in San Diego, California, before moving to Broadway in 1987. A West End production opened in 1990. As critic William A. Henry III wrote in a glowing review in Time magazine in 1987:

[B]y the end of the first act the fairy-tale figures have bonded into a community and sing and dance about living happily ever after. But they don’t.…Into the Woods aspires to nothing less than explaining the nature of growing up and taking responsibility.

Into the Woods was Sondheim and Lapine’s second collaboration, following 1984’s Sunday in the Park with George, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The idea for the project arose naturally as Sondheim and Lapine continued their working relationship. Sondheim’s interest in a “quest” narrative, Lapine’s desire to write a fairy tale, and the plot of their abandoned television pilot, in which characters from different universes meet in a hospital waiting room, came together to create the innovative new musical.

Several performers from Sunday in the Park with George accompanied Sondheim and Lapine to the first production of Into the Woods, including Bernadette Peters (the Witch), Danielle Ferland (Little Red Riding Hood), and Robert Westenberg (Cinderella’s Prince/the Wolf). Chip Zien and Joanna Gleason joined as characters original to the musical, the Baker and the Baker’s Wife, respectively. The production opened to positive reviews, with special attention going to Peters’s performance. “If you can resist [Into the Woods’] luscious star, Bernadette Peters,” wrote Howard Kissel of the New York Daily News, “you are beyond the help of potions and spells.” Up against the strong competition of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera at the 1988 Tony Awards, Into the Woods still received 10 nominations and won three awards, including best original music score for Sondheim and best book of a musical for Lapine.

A 2014 film adaptation of Into the Woods, directed by Rob Marshall, starred Emily Blunt (the Baker’s Wife), James Corden (the Baker), Anna Kendrick (Cinderella), Meryl Streep (the Witch), and Johnny Depp (the Wolf). Though largely true to the original plot, the adaptation did cut several songs in order to shorten the running time by about 30 minutes. The film version of Into the Woods was appreciated by critics, including Sophie Gilbert, who wrote in The Atlantic that “when it comes to navigating how to be both a family-friendly holiday crowdpleaser and a faithful adaptation of a tricky but profound musical, Into the Woods is mostly golden.” Audience reviews were more mixed, with negative reactions likely being tinged by unfamiliarity with the source material. Even a slightly more saccharine version of Sondheim’s musical, after all, veered closer to the Brothers Grimm than to Disney’s animated Cinderella (1950). Into the Woods received three Academy Award nominations, including a nod for best supporting actress for Streep, but lost in each category.

A limited Broadway revival of Into the Woods, running from 2022 to 2023, originally starred Sara Bareilles (the Baker’s Wife), Brian d’Arcy James (the Baker), Phillipa Soo (Cinderella), and Julia Lester (Little Red Riding Hood). It was nominated for six Tony Awards in 2023, including for best revival of a musical and best direction of a musical. Bareilles, d’Arcy James, and Lester also received nominations for their performances.