Into The Woods: the Witch and Rapunzel — Page 6

I may be late to the game thinking about all of this but I'm suddenly a bit confused.

Is this the order of the back story?

The Baker's father takes the beans.

The Witch's mother punished her for "losing the beans" when the Baker's father took them (i.e., the Witch was responsible for guarding the beans and she was blamed for having them stolen).

This punishment was to make her ugly.

She then curses the Baker's father's house with infertility.

If you're with me so far, then it strikes me as interesting that the Witch would have chosen this specific curse. Could it be that the Witch felt that she lost her mother's love when her mother punished her, and that her justice was to deprive the Baker's children of the love between parents and children?

Also Rapunzel would have been cursed as well. But the curse is lifted at the end of Act I. But when does Rapunzel conceive (or not) the twins? Is it before the curse was lifted? Is that why the babies are dust?

If so, is the Witch wounded by her own curse when she, alone without anyone, goes to take the babies, but there are none because Rapunzel could not bear live children?

Also, could the Witch's shielding Rapunzel from the world have an added motive. Does the Witch see Rapunzel's infertility as making her unfit to be a wife, let alone a consort for a prince? Or at least does that justify in the Witch's mind her keeping Rapunzel all to herself, because no one would want a barren woman as his wife? Therefore, the Witch feels there is something benign in her smothering Rapunzel and shielding her from the world? That it's for her own good?

Updated On: 8/8/12 at 04:51 PM

Gaveston, I didn't see this thread as being just about the overtones of eros in parent/child relationships. If that's the question, I think I agree with you completely. Those overtones are certainly there in the Witch's and Rapunzel's relationship, and they are not there by accident. And probably have always been there from the first telling of the tale of Rapunzel.

But it seemed many here were also discussing whether the Witch's interest in Rapunzel is consciously and or primarily sexual (as opposed to subconsciously in a garden variety - pun intended - Oedipal mode). I don't see it as being consciously and or primarily or predatorially sexual. And I'm not sure you do either.

Updated On: 8/8/12 at 05:08 PM

Robbie, I apologize. I thought you were attributing performance choices to chronological ages and I got to thinking, "Wait a minute. Is Peters really that much older than Foley?"

Which sent me to Wikipedia to check, as I mentioned. So I certainly wasn't "bragging" that I can find that site. I just misunderstood your point. My bad.

Hannah Waddingham's Witch is creepily obsessed with being a mother, from her cry of "Look what you made me do!" when she hacks off Rapunzel's hair to the predatory way she says "..and those beautiful babies." Even when she's beautiful again, her twisted version of motherhood makes her ugly.

It's predatory but not sexual... it's almost about controlling beauty in her life. She was unable to control her own, so she possessively takes control of others.

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Yes, Henrik, you are correct. I'm talking about subconscious motives. The first post here began, "Does anyone else find homoerotic overtones in the way the Witch keeps Rapunzel for herself...." Maybe the OP meant hints at sexual behavior, but I took the post to mean references to sexual motives, not behavior.

That being said and since I just skimmed through the published libretto in response to your question about the curse, it's hard to say whether the Witch has a true, three-part human psyche.

She's rather clear late in Act II:

"I'm the witch. You're the world.
I'm the hitch, I'm what no one believes...."

Of course that's when she wants to do the practical thing and give Jack to the Giantess. But she does make it clear she isn't bound by conventional human morality.

But, no, I don't imagine her and Rapunzel "going at it" in the tower. In fact, the Witch sings, "Stay a child while you can stay a child." And the world of the play seems to see seclusion at home with parents as chaste. Sex is associated with going "into the woods".

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As for the curse, it is written somewhat obliquely and seems to be at least in part triggered by the Baker's Father's attempt to go back on the deal to give up his first born, but your sequence is right.

I think it makes perfect sense that the Witch's mother makes her "old and ugly" which is the equivalent of "barren" in this world; so the Witch barters for a child from the Baker's Father.

I don't know about Rapunzel's children turning to dust. Was that just an expression? In the published libretto, they simply aren't seen again in Act II.

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Thanks, Robbie.

Updated On: 8/8/12 at 05:53 PM

Henrik:

I've figured that The Witch cursed the Baker and his father but not Rapunzel, since she had already taken possesion of the baby. And I assume Rapunzel concieves on her first tryst with the Prince (probably on the second day of the three midnights.)

Gaveston:
The child turning to dust is a reference to a really cool bit of staging in the Regent's Park version, and I am assuming its being done in NY., so Possible SPOILER ALERT:

Rapunzel had a baby carriage with one of her children in it when she comes on in act two (in this staging very drunk.) The carriage is abandoned by Rapunzel when she runs away from the Witch and under the Giant's foot. Then, as the Witch sings her Lament, she goes to pick up her grandchild, and as she sings "Children can only grow from something you love to something you loose), the blanket unravels and some dust falls out of it, prompting the Witch to scream in horror.

My reading of this was not that the child had turned to dust but that Rapunzel had abandoned or lost it somewhere in her insanity/inebriation, and had wrapped an empty blanket as if there was still a child there. It was a knockout moment when I saw it on the video.

i just went back and watched Hannah Waddingham do that number. It is truly brilliant.

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It really was a big hole (yet one that never bothered me, or I even noticed really, when watching) that Rapunzel's twins are never mentioned in Act II of the original production. As I've said elsewhere, I guess it could be assumed they'r ebeing looked after at whatever neighbouring kingdom her Prince runs, or something?

Henrik--I think Rapounzel does give birth to relatively healthy twins--the original production makes that fairly clear anyway, so if we assume this whole curse thing is as well thought out as you make it (it's always been kinda unclear to me), I can only assume she conceived of the baby just as the curse was broken (I know she gives birth once banished to the desert, but actually doesn't the Witch banish her BEFORE the curse is lifted and she's re-found her blind prince? so... Hrmm. And speaking of blindness, love the little bit of business in the Regent's Park video with the Step Mom trying to get Rapunzel to cry on her blind daughters...)

Sorry Gaveston, I was unclear--I knew that was Karla who lipsynched to Foley's vocals. Maybe they simply were too lazy to film a new performance, and so used the concert footage for the video but to get better sound used the album recording. Anyway, cool that she's married to Benson (who actually I know mainly as the voice of the Beast in Beauty and the Beast--though I know he was something of a teen idol int he 70s and did a bunchof youth movies, I'm not actually sure I ever saw any of them).

AfterEight, just since you tend to like to correct, and I also share your love of fairy tales, it should be pointed out that ITW doesn't use Perrault as a source. At all. Perrault was an author, like Hans Christian Anderson who did use folk sources for many of his stories, but re-wrote them as literature. The Grimm Bros collections purported to be faithful written copies of the original oral stories (although its since been proven that over the various editions the Grimm bros both started to make the stories more kid-friendly for the time and more CHristian, partly due to the original editions aimed at adults not selling). That's why they don't have the fairy godmother and glass slipper in CInderella (Perrault inventions), nor do they use Perrault's version of Little Red (which ends with the wolf eating her up and... that's it. No happy ending, no being saved).

Good explanation!

The line that always bugged me was 'Your father cried, your mother died.' I mean...what's the definition of 'died' here? Like, put her in the ground? Or more like, 'That chicken parm was so good I DIED!' Cause if she really was dead, the line would have been 'I laid a little spell on HIM'....not 'them'. Right? Have I gone down the rabbit hole??

Yes and I linked to it about 5 pages back Good read (Sondheim and Lapine shoulda really adapted the Junniper Tree ).

Henrik, I got that assumption because in the OBCR the Prince seems happy enough when he can see and looks at his twins in Rapunzel's arms... And agreed about the moment in this production with the "dust baby"--at least on video with the London production (which Gaveston *could* see ), though it's probably even better live.

I should mention that Rapunzel's twins are more than just dust... there are bones. They don't necessarily read well from a distance and may get tangled in the blanket, but there are in fact dust and bones. I believe they were also present in Regent's Park.

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