There's a story that has a character who makes his first entrance by appearing inside a mirror, unrequited love, requited love, murder, redemption, a falling chandelier, and some of the most amazing music ever written. I'm talking about The Phantom of the Opera, and if those few details haven't gotten you excited, or the title hasn't sparked some form of recognition, it might intrigue you to learn that as of October 9th this show has been running for 28 years!
Based on the novel of the same name by French author Gaston Leroux, the story centers on an 1800's love triangle between Christine, the rising opera star, Raoul, the handsome aristocrat, and the Phantom, Christine's mask-wearing vocal coach who haunts the Paris opera house. The music is by Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber (think about that; he's such a good composer Queen Elizabeth made him a lord) who also helped with the script/book alongside Richard Stilgoe, while Charles Hart took care of the lyrics.

It won the Tony Award for best musical, has spawned wedding themes, and people have even changed their names to Christine Daaé, after the show's heroine.
So, when it reached the quarter-century mark, Phantom was performed at The Royal Albert Hall in London for two nights only, the second of which was thankfully immortalized on DVD. With a cast hand-picked by Lord Lloyd-Webber, the standouts are the indescribable Sierra Boggess as Christine--the composer has called her "the perfect Christine", which is saying something since he was briefly married to the originator;* the frighteningly talented Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom, and the charismatic Hadley Fraser as the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny.




Now, our title character--Leroux's book calls him Erik--isn't a ghost, but a disfigured musical prodigy who's equally talented at hypnosis, blackmail, illusion, fireball throwing, and murder by rope. Ramin Karimloo isn't afraid to delve into the character's maze of a personality; you get that he's a threat with the emotional maturity of a teenager--and can surmise that any education on courting came from operas/books of the time where the brutish guy gets the girl after pursuing her to the point of restraining orders--while finding the portrayal sympathetic and romantic. Hadley Fraser brilliantly shows that he and his romantic rival are two sides of the same coin, heroic where Karimloo is melodramatic and lustful where he is adoring.

Speaking of adoration, Sierra Boggess's transition from a grieving, confused, frightened ingénue to a self-actualized, emotionally in tune songbird is the reason she is on her way to becoming a household name. Her chemistry with Ramin Karimloo is so electric, no doubt helped by the fact that they've played opposite each other before and inhabit these characters like second skins, that poor Hadley Fraser at times has to do the acting/vocal equivalent of clearing his throat and politely drawing attention back to the fact that he's the romantic lead.

Music Matters

The two men in Christine's life play emotional Ping-Pong with her grief for her late father, love of music, and desire for a happy, carefree life.** On top of this, she has a growing fear of the Phantom's manipulations, compounded by a case of more general anxiety--probably that she's going to go nuts from all the other stuff. Considering all that, it's no wonder she both laments and wants to move on from this parent's passing, shown in the song "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again":

It's hard to imagine a time when the name Sutton Foster didn't make theatre lovers gush on social media in similar fashion to fans' current exploding of feeds over Taylor Swift's latest album. At 39, the actress and singer has proven she can simultaneously sing, dance, and flat-out charm her way into hearts with almost disturbing ease, and if you don't know why this is, I must rectify it immediately, because it's the equivalent of not recognizing the name Taylor Swift!

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Once upon a time in New York (specifically 1987) there came a musical that anyone of any age could enjoy--and they still do, because it's performed by schools and professional and community theaters to this day, and the film adaptation's coming out this Christmas. With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (who'd done 14 other shows by this point, and if you walk by a crowded theater shouting any of their titles I swear someone will know what you're yelling about and strike up a conversation) and a book/script by James Lapine (who also directed) it was smart, funny, hit emotional buttons, had fantastic songs, covered still-contemporary issues, and the duo had won a Pulitzer Prize for their previous work, so they were super-qualified to entertain people! It was called Into The Woods, and it was all about fairy tales.

Now this was long before fairy tales started showing up on our screens with different takes, and this show's never-duplicated concept was to tie together four of the original Grimm Brothers tales into its own distinct story. Based on a desire to make a quest musical as universal as The Wizard of Oz (can I have just a quarter of that ambition?)--*and actually never influenced by Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses Of Enchantment, as theatre lore has postulated for years**--Into The Woods is as beloved by theatre fans as the fables that make up its heart. Because someone realized its staying power after it won 3 Tony Awards (2 for Mr. Lapine and Mr. Sondheim's work), PBS filmed the show with its glorious original cast in 1989. You can still buy it on DVD, and it will be released for the first time on Blu-ray on December 2nd of this year.



Star-wise, the DVD is worth seeing/owning because of the incomparable, world-famous Bernadette Peters as the Witch, lovely Kim Crosby as Cinderella, and the late Tom Aldredge as the Narrator/Mysterious Man, who may be recognizable from his many film/television roles. The show centers on a childless Baker and his Wife, who are told by a Witch that she will reverse her curse (making them unable to conceive) if they bring her 4 objects they'll be able to find in the woods surrounding the kingdom: a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn and a slipper as pure as gold. Fulfilling her demand, the couple encounter Jack (the beanstalk one), Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Cinderella (in the Grimm version, her slipper is gold, not glass), and become part of their stories. At the end of act one, everyone gets a happy-ever-after, though deft and obvious foreshadowing plant a few seeds of suspicion, so the second act deals with the consequences of what everyone did to get there.

If you like fairy tales, whether you're familiar with the Grimm ones or not, Into The Woods gives a realistic slant that somehow doesn't diminish what makes them fun to begin with. If you're not a fan, it provides characters you probably wanted to spend time with as a kid--they're three-dimensional, not archetypes.

Take Little Red as an example for lovers and haters alike; every culture can collectively say that she's defined by the red cape her grandmother made, the wolf she chats with eats her grandmother, after it eats her too they're both rescued, and the moral is don't talk to strangers.

In Into The Woods, the fact that Red's independent enough to go to Granny's by herself makes her think she's an adult (but the audience gets plenty of reminders she's a kid). After getting freed from the wolf, her moral is the knowledge of caution like we expect; but she also comes away with the idea that she must eradicate these monsters before they do damage to anyone else.

This is because Granny gives her a knife and a new cape made of the wolf's skin--yes, you shouldn't really be liking Granny right now--and since Red's treated as a character instead of an archetype, she's as reckless as ever, only now seeming numbed to committing violence. This hints that she has more things to learn, and will grow up more in act two; a far cry from the girl who learns not to talk to strangers.

Speaking of characters, the Baker and his Wife are probably the most relatable, because they're us, dropped into fable land. In the midst of Red getting eaten and Rapunzel's hair being long enough to climb, all the Bakers want is to live life. They want a baby, to make enough money to support their family, and occasionally fantasize about how amazing it would be to go to a royal ball--replace ball with any star-studded thing you've wondered about and you're in sync with them.

They're not perfect; the Baker's not good at confrontation and the Wife is way too invested in living vicariously through Cinderella's relationship, but how can we not cheer them on? They're us. Well actually, I won't be cheering if their baby turns out like Jack, because that kid is annoying. Whereas Red's oddly likeable despite bratty tendencies, "innocent, empty-headed Jack" doesn't have enough imagination to make his lyrics rhyme until returning from the beanstalk.*** Sure, his love for his cow is sweet, and wanting her back is what prompts him to steal gold from the giants (a married couple live on the stalk), but seriously, why does your mother need a hen that lays golden eggs? At least Jack shows some sense in act two, when he decides to kill the giantess wreaking havoc everywhere, but when he's blamed for being the reason that she's stomping around in the first place, his excuse is that there wouldn't have been a beanstalk if he hadn't been given beans.

Technically true, but you didn't have to go up it three times! Jack must learn about consequences, and because this lesson comes in a world that doesn't flinch from the darker things in life, it's going to hit home, unlike the tale we know where stealing from and killing a giant who wants to eat you after you were caught trespassing earns you a happy ending.

The Witch, our most obvious big bad--who I must reiterate is played by Bernadette Peters, the equivalent of a musically gifted American Judy Dench--is complex. It's wrong but understandable why she locks Rapunzel in a tower; wrong for the obvious emotional stunting of isolation, but understandable because there are talking people-eating wolves and a nearsighted giantess out there!
Her curse isn't specifically directed at the Bakers, but at their bloodline, because after she agreed to give the Baker's father veggies to satisfy his mother's cravings in exchange for baby Rapunzel, he stole the magic beans that cause all the trouble in act two. Generation-long barrenness might be overkill, but since the beans were harmless in the Witch's garden and inadvertently cause six deaths outside of it, you see why she did something.

Furthermore, she is the voice of reason. When the giantess shows up wanting revenge on Jack, the Witch is the only one willing to hand him over.

As with the curse, it's not the best solution, but the giantess won't leave until she's had her vengeance, and all anyone else can say is "Yes it's Jack's fault, but death is horrible!"

When Red makes a comment to this affect, the Witch calls her on her hypocrisy: "Since when are you so squeamish? How many wolves have you carved up?", "A wolf's not the same!" Red fires back, to which the Witch replies, "Ask a wolf's mother.” It's an exchange that covers so many things, including the idea that being moral just to be moral--killing a wolf because it's carnivorous, not killing a human because death is wrong--can be just as bad as being greedy.

The darker aspects that characterize the Grimm tales aren't lingered over, and they're pulled off as comic moments that today's TV-watching public would see as tame, so you're free to just sit back and enjoy the story. And some of the most beautiful bits of storytelling happen because of the source material, one of the best examples being Cinderella's song "On the Steps of the Palace".

Sondheim had trouble writing the vocal explanation of Cinderella's thoughts, because the brothers Grimm don't have her leave at midnight as we're used to; instead the ball occurs over 3 nights.

So, to sum up his rant in Look, I Made a Hat: WHY does she willingly choose to go back to the hole where she's a virtual prisoner every night when there's someone who will happily treat her like a human being?

Why keep going back to the ball if you're going to run away? Sondheim says: "No one in five hundred-plus years has given a plausible explanation of her indecisiveness until Lapine came along with a startling solution: Cinderella doesn't lose her slipper, she deliberately leaves it behind. She knows she's an impostor and doesn't want willingly to mislead the Prince (and the world). She figures that if the Prince really cares to see her again, he'll follow the clue she has left. She doesn't want an accident of fate to fix her life, she wants to be loved for herself.
And what about Cinderella's Prince? Well, if nothing else, he and his brother, Rapunzel's Prince, are an entertaining pair...just lacking in a few necessary virtues, (like humility), and the reprise of this song in act two turns even that we-overlook-your-flaws trope on its head:
If you're at all intrigued, you can order the DVD. If you're already a fan, or become one after this post, feel free to rave about Woods' awesomeness in the comments. And if you're experiencing some Cinderella-esk indecision, may I add that by watching the show, you'll be ahead of the people who just know there's a movie coming out called Into The Woods, and it's got something to do with fairy tales?

* Sondheim puts this rumor to bed in Look, I Made a Hat.
** Since it was the only other popular material focusing on the woods as a place that challenged/strengthened characters, people assumed it served as inspiration; however the book never addresses consequences, which is an even larger theme of the show.
*** See Look,I Made a Hat for the full explanation of this character choice.