ABSTRACT

To some degree, Into the Woods mirrors how one’s relationship with fairy tales changes over time: we may first encounter them when we are children as enchanting clear-cut narratives of heroism triumphing over villainy. But, as we grow older, we realize that life is too complex to be reduced to simple good vs evil scenarios, and at the point we abandon them and turn towards more challenging reading material as a more apt guide to the society we live in. In a similar way the musical with its increasingly murky moral landscape progressively replaces the primary colours of children’s stories with swaths of grey and thus moves from child-appropriate fun and simplicity to more grown-up concerns of communal responsibility and dealing with loss. Similar to the readers of fairy tales, the show’s characters thus learn on their journey through the woods that the original ‘happily ever after’ has a limited ‘use-by’ date before it is revealed as a lie we tell ourselves and our children to make their environment seem less frightening. Yet, the musical never loses sight of the fact that it is fairy tales that first feed our hunger for stories and that they are an important stepping stone on our way to discovering more complex artistic expressions of the world we live in. They are the starting point for our journey into wider society and into the realm of literature and related arts; they also provide the foundation for our appreciation of the craft of story-telling, a craft that is both cherished and exemplified by ITW.