Congratulations. You are playing one of the greatest and best -written characters in American musical theater.
Open your eyes wide and let her breathe and think. And let the audience SEE your thoughts.
This is a character who works through a great many complicated and contradictory ideas and feelings in an unusually verbal way. Use Sondheim's words to go on a journey--many journeys--and take the audience on those journeys with you. The audience is your friend, your therapist, your non-judging confidante.
Relish all the contradictions she experiences, like in the first act when she notices something about her husband that delights her but is nevertheless completely different from what she has known:
You've changed.
You're thriving.
There's something about the woods.
Not just
Surviving.
You're blossoming in the woods. This is a woman who embraces contradiction. She is tickled by it. It delights her.
At home I'd fear
We'd stay the same forever.
And then out here-
You're passionate
Charming,
Considerate,
Clever... Or in the second act, where she is questioning herself--with an astonishing series of question after question after question. In many ways, this song is the Sondheimian equivalent of the great Shakespearean questioning soliloquies like Viola's ring speech in Twelfth Night ("What means this lady?...How will this fadge?") or Hamlet's "To be or not to be."
What was that?
Was that me?
Was that him?
Did a Prince really kiss me...?
And kiss me...?
And kiss me...?
And did I kiss him back? That last question ("Did I kiss him back?") may just be my favorite line in all of Sondheim because, well, never mind. It may very well be your favorite too someday...but never mind that either.
Suffice it to say that despite the cleverness of that question, this next series of questions is deadly serious.
Was it wrong?
Am I mad?
Is that all?
Does he miss me?
Was he suddenly
Getting bored with me? So serious that she has to snap herself back to reality with a rat-a-tat series of commands:
Wake up! Stop dreaming.
Stop prancing about the woods!... Just like later in that song, when she goes from another rat-a-tat series of commands back to more and even deeper questioning:
Face the facts, find the boy,
Join the group, stop the Giant-
Just get out of these woods.
Was that him? Yes, it was.
Was that me? No it wasn't,
Just a trick of the woods. Don't worry about getting tripped up by the contradictions. Revel in them. Exult in them. Explore them. Enjoy the the sweet agony of the ping-ponging back and forth. Feel completely comfortable confiding in that audience/therapist/best friend.
Just a moment,
One peculiar passing moment...
Must it all be either less or more,
Either plain or grand?
Is it always "or"?
Is it never "and"? Savor those words "or" and "and"--because they come back to you in the glorious finale of that song:
Let the moment go...
Don't forget it for a moment, though.
Just remembering you've had an "and"
When you're back to "or"
Makes the "or" mean more
Than it did before. Whatever that sentence means to you now, I guarantee it will mean something different to you next year and something different to the you of 10 years from now and something different when you're my age. But whatever it means to you right now, at the moment when you're singing it, is true, and you get to exultantly proclaim:
Now I understand!
And it's time...
To leave the woods. Have a ball.
Updated On: 9/17/14 at 04:06 PM
