Into the Woods deserves best musical on Tony?

For me, the Tony from Best Musical to Phantom of the opera is deserved. But, there are some 'sondheimfas' who do not accept...

What do you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-2KGKuwewA

I disliked ITW major -- dare I say virtually hated it? -- when I saw it with the original cast. It is one of the only Sondheim musicals for which I actually dislike most of the score, particularly that never ending reprise of the early bars of the title song throughout the show. Makes me squirm. I saw it a couple of more times -- because it IS Sondheim) and continued to dislike it. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the movie more than any of the 3 - 4 live performances I have seen.

Phantom may not be high art, but it is high entertainment's evidenced by the audiences who have flocked to it for the past 31 years (in 32 in England). Perhaps if it had not been directed by Harold Prince, it would not have become the monster hit that it is; but that is unprovable. Maybe ALW's score alone would have still created a legendary show.

They're both utterly dreadful x

AADA81 said: "ITW has it's problems, primarily a didactic book and an iffy second act, so I don't think it'sa top-tier Sondheim/Lapine show, but Phantom is just empty spectacle with a rather forgettable score. I was bored to death with that one."

I think you put it perfectly. I would add the constant reprise of the beginning bars of the title song...I really was getting aggravated at those constant refrains.

Personally, I feel that if your show does not win the Tony for "Best Score", I don't feel that it should win for "Best Musical". I saw "Into the Woods", before it offically opened in previews and found it very enjoyable and then saw it again after it had been running for awhile and didn't realize that "certain" changes had been made. I saw "Phantom" in the West End and was completely bored out of my mind. I could not understand why so many people enjoyed and why had it been playing for so long. "Into the Woods" is most definitely the better musical, hands down!...

kdogg36 said: "This would logically imply, I think, that both awards should always go to the same show (unless Best Musical isn't awarded at all). There wouldn't be any point in having separate awards."

You mean like the Tony Awards already do with "Best Play"?

I GREATLY prefer INTO THE WOODS, but its creators could have used a ruthless visit from Hal Prince to help with the latter half of the second act. From La Jolla to Broadway to First National Tour to I've lost track of how many professional and amateur productions, I have never seen an audience fail to squirm and chat among themselves during all of those abstract-lyric ballads in a row toward the end of the evening. And I still don't know what "No One Is Alone" really wants to say.

OTOH, I finally saw Puccini's LA FANCIULLA DEL WEST for the first time. I've long heard people say "Lloyd Webber steals from Puccini" but the bridge for "Music of the Night" is practically note-for-note a copy of "Minnie's Theme" in FANCIULLA. Should any show be "Best Musical" when it steals so brazenly and without attribution? I'm not a musician so if theft is obvious to my ear, I can only imagine how much has actually been borrowed!

^^^^ First, I hope it was clear I wasn't rejecting the entire second act. The first act may be fun and beautifully crafted. (Yes, they used the Grimm versions of the fairy tales rather than the more light-hearted French versions usually employed by Disney; but the two aren't all THAT different. And even Cinderella's Stepsisters are punished in a cartoonish way, however ghoulish.)

As fun as Act I can be, however, Act II is the point of the show. I will check out the link provided by A Director, but if Sondheim has to "explain" the latter part of his show, then that rather proves my point, don't you think?

And FWIW, I am one of the two people who adored PASSION and still think it is an exquisite score.

*****

Okay, I watched the YouTube lesson and Sondheim is a genius who seems to somehow explain and miss the obvious. It's all well and good to say the action of "No More" is all in the last two words; but what I am saying, not as my subjective opinion but as my observation of all sorts of ITW audiences, is that nobody is listening by the time those two final words come along! They are rifling through their programs. If you are lucky.

As for "No One Is Alone", OF COURSE, it's an adult trying to comfort a child. (And it's okay for Mr. S to point that out; I realize he made that video for high school kids, among others.)

But Sondheim's best lyrics (actually, everyone's best, musical theater lyrics) paint word pictures in the listener's mind as the song is sung. Songs like "Giants in the Sky" and "I Know Things Now" do this beautifully. So does "Send in the Clowns", if you think about it and to take another late-in-the-evening challenging lyric. The word pictures communicated compensate for the fact we only get to hear the song once, and, in the case of "No One", only when we are tired. But:

Mother isn't here now
Wrong things, right things
Who knows what she'd say?
Who can say what's true?
Nothing's quite so clear now
Do things, fight things
Feel you've lost your way?
You decide, but
You are not alone
Believe me
No one is alone (No one is alone)
Believe me
Truly

People make mistakes
Fathers
Mothers
People make mistakes
Holding to their own
Thinking they're alone
Honor their mistakes
Fight for their mistakes
Everybody makes
One another's terrible mistakes
Witches can be right, giants can be good
You decide what's right, you decide what's good....

There are many contradictory ideas in that and they are all expressed in the abstract. Pardon me, but I think it's apparent Sondheim doesn't have any children to comfort. I appreciate that he doesn't want to end the show with some simplistic moral, but (again based on observing audiences) he loses his listeners in the many, abstract meanings of "alone". I mean if YOU and only you decide, then you are alone (as he acknowledges in the video). And if people make mistakes because they mistakenly believe they are alone (and therefore don't think of the consequences for others, maybe?), why should we fight for those mistakes? Shouldn't we correct them? Etc. and so forth. Too late in the evening to decipher a doctoral dissertation crammed into a haiku.

Updated On: 12/27/18 at 09:54 PM

GavestonPS said: "You mean like the Tony Awards already do with "Best Play"?"

Yes, and I'd prefer that they had separate writing and production awards for plays, too. The fact that the book, score, and musical awards have often gone to different shows strongly suggests that Tony voters are capable of differentiating between the writing and the production.

Just to be clear:

*I* never said ITW was "second-tier Sondheim" and I don't think of it as such.

I don't think it's dated.

I don't think it's overly didactic. I think it is far more thought-provoking than POTO.

I don't think it's pessimistic. (And compared to what? POTO pretends to be a tragedy!) Writing complex characters instead of cartoons isn't pessimism.

But I don't think even we Sondheim fanatics have to pretend ITW is "perfect". The authors are too smug by half at the end, based on my observation of audiences. Before he worked with Lapine, Sondheim used to be brutally honest about what worked and what didn't in his shows, at least once he had a chance to reflect back on them. I suspect he retreated downtown and stayed too long after the epic disaster of MERRILY (another lovely score to most of us). Lapine is capable of exquisite and imaginative clarity (see his original staging for MARCH OF THE FALSETTOS), but he also has a tendency to indulge his conceits in other shows.

POTO is "better in every way"? Oh, pshaw! A friend played Raul in LA for years, so I have seen it many, many, too many times. (And my friend was very good.) But the only time I was NOT bored silly was the day I threw my back out and saw the show high on Vicodin. Maybe I'll get to see ITW on oxycontin someday.