Giants In The Sky- Into The Woods Revival — Page 3

AmericanBoy, I will exempt Edelman and Sieber from my previous statement. I agree with Brantley's assessment of them. I'd forgotten about them when I painted the entire cast with such a broad brush. Their duets were the highlight of the show.

I stand by my opinion of Benanti. Quoting critics is meaningless. I think what I think, and you think what you think. What Brantley thinks doesn't prove anything. In fact, I find Brantley's reviews of pretty young women are often slanted toward the glowing so quoting him doesn't impress or sway me. I saw none of the things he mentions when I attended.

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IMO, the revised ending for "On the Steps of the Palace" was absurd, unnecessary, and ruined the original ending.
Laura Benanti is quite a talented girl and I like her Cinderella, but Kim Crosby got that character to a T and truly made it work in so many ways, her change from a maid to princess to survivor was ingenious. Also, her "On the Steps of the Palace" was both hilarious and a kind of self-reflective song a la "The Road You Didn't Take," Benanti missed the humor of the song, IMO.
The lyrical changes to "Last Midnight" are just sacrilegious.

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Back to whomever said this, but I do think that Wylie was having the "change" vocally, if you watch that season (3, I think), of "Gilmore girls" his voice is deeper when he returns after his run in "Into the Woods" than it is in earlier episodes.

And, as a late bloomer, at 16, it was all I could do to hold a note steady and not warble, and even then I didn't typically succeed.

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Maybe they cast him before his voice had started to change. But regardless, I think that as opposed to cutting out one of the bigger (and IMO one of the best) songs from the show at any given performance is unacceptable. The understudy should have just been put on.

jewishboy-
I hate to point this out, but the Witch is not meant to be scary, especially in Act II. If you look at her lyrics in "Last Midnight" she says that she isn't good or nice, only right. The Witch is the only person (Narrator aside) who knows exactly what is going on, with three exceptions. She doesn't know 1) How to keep beauty and power; 2) How to keep Rapunzel; 3) How to stop what is happening from happening. Nothing she does is scary, or intimidating, if anything she's the most human and proactive. Her sacrificing the Narrator (or the attempt with Florinda and Lucinda) are not her being dangerous, but trying to solve the problem at hand. Her descision to give Jack to the Giant is not a difficult one to come to, she's lost a child, destruction is all around, so she is going to stop it by giving her what she wants. It's only when the others try to be nice (there isn't any real reason for them to save Jack, none of them have an emotional connection), that she turns even remotely scary, and even then "Last Midnight" (Which is her "Rose's Turn" in a sense) is watched with more fascination than true terror (Until she starts throwing beans about, but that's not horror so much as panic).

Hopefully that all makes sense and I didn't just sit here and babble.

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I LOVED the OBC - the movie of the show is great. I think what they did with Little Red Riding hood was brillant - making her a fat, slob type person. My problem with the revival was that they didn't seem to have a sense of who the story was about. In the Original it seemed like the show was kind of about the Baker's Wife and so you actually felt for her, but the Revival didn't really seemed focused on anyone therefore you didn't feel for anyone.

My comments, which contradict one another. Go figure.:

1. Agree with jewishboy about Peters' Witch being a Jewish mother.
2. COMPLETELY agree with what husk_charmer replied.
3. I also, like RentBoy, felt the revival was unfocused.
4. At first I thought the show focused on the Baker's Wife, like RentBoy, which is evidenced in the OBC dvd. On paper, it makes sense that Cinderella is the focus.
5. bwaygal, do you have a source/citation/link for that info? I'm not doubting, just curious.

I think another problem with the 2002 revival is that they tried too hard to not be seen as a copy of the original. One of the ways they accomplished this was to go against the natural flow of the comedic writing. Many of the lines and moments that were written to be funny were played seriously.

I assume this was so they wouldn't be percieved as copying the original cast's interpretations of these lines. But the original cast was not just giving comedic interpretations of lines; the lines were actually written to be comedic and should be played that way. Playing them seriously only made them sound odd and flat. I spent most of the time sitting there thinking, "ooh, you missed a really good opportunity for a laugh right there. Why?"

They then tried to create comedy in places it didn't naturally exist in the script. This appeared as mugging. Can you tell I didn't care for this production?

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Updated On: 7/19/07 at 05:11 PM

husk_charmer, thank you for your smart reply, it was not just babble. I really do agree with a lot of what you said, but one thing still bothers me. The character is The Witch. And although she may not be scary a witch has so many connotations that when a character is a Witch it has to frightfull/intimidating. That intimadation can come from wanting to be able to solve the problem of the giant.

"a witch has so many connotations that when a character is a Witch it has to frightfull/intimidating."

One of the main points of the show is that "giants can be right, witches can be good," that life is not as simple as our standard perception of fairy tales, what people are complicated and so is happily ever after. The characterizations are all about blasting stereotypes.

Cinderella's prince tells us he was "raised to be charming, not sincere", but the reality, when you think about it, is that he's really not charming either. Look at the way he talks to people throughout the show. He's closer to intolerant, condescending and manipulative. The typical storybook prince is charming, sincere and faithful.

Little Red is not the innocent victim that's usually portrayed in books. Cinderella is usually sweet and eager in books, not conflicted, standoffish and bold.

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Updated On: 7/20/07 at 08:11 AM