James Lapine Slayed Into the Woods
James Lapine was born in Mansfield Ohio in 1949, and graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1971. He then went on to receive his MFA in photography and Graphic Design from the California Institute of the Arts in 1973. He then began to write and direct plays and musicals Off-Broadway. Beginning with directing the second of three one-act musicals by William Finn, March of the Falsettos in 1981. He is probably most well known however for the project that followed, in collaboration with a very indie underground composer going by the name of Stephen Sondheim, Lapine wrote the book for and directed Sunday in the Park with George in 1982. Sunday in the Park With George, in my opinion, is very much an artistic spectacle of a show and goes against his general pattern of focusing on characterization and symbolizing objectives, I could write another essay on that show alone, but I will not as Lapine already wrote a book about it in 2021: Putting it Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I created "Sunday in the Park with George." Anyways, he then went on to work with William Finn frequently, Directing the third of three one act musicals by Finn, Falsettoland (1990), Lapine then wrote the book for and Directed the Musical combining the three One Acts, Falsettos (1992). Working with William Finn, Lapine also directed The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005). James Lapine is probably much better known for his collaborations with Stephen Sondheim, however. With Sondheim, Lapine directed Merrily We Roll Along (1981). He also wrote the book for and directed Into the Woods (1987), Passion (1994).
My personal favorite piece Lapine has been involved in is Into the Woods. As stated earlier, Lapine’s style as a director does not rely on spectacle, notably with this production, the set is not that complicated. It has a cool background of intertwining vines sure, but it's very simplistic. The set consists of three “houses'', which are painted on a wall in the back with entrances for the three corresponding stories of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, and the story of the baker, invented by Lapine and Sondheim (fig. 1). For the rest of the show there is basically a fence that looks like foliage that covers about 6 feet from each offstage entrance, there's a built rake in the middle of the stage on a turntable (fig.2). There are five other set pieces in the show total. Four of these get wheeled on, those being a horse for Cinderella’s Prince, a chariot for Cinderella’s Step-family, a big tree that houses Cinderella’s Mother, and a transparent house to represent Granny’s cottage, and also Jack’s Mother’s Home on occasion. The fifth piece rises from USL, being Rapunzel's tower. To summarize, its a rake that can spin with some vines from offstage, and there are 5 other things that are there sometimes. In a lot of musicals it can make sense to have a more simplistic set as to provide a lot of room for a larger ensemble, but in almost every piece Lapine has directed, there is no large dance ensemble, so why did he agree to this set? The costumes are awfully simplistic as well, everything they did with the set and costumes seems to have been exclusively to progress and demonstrate the plot, not too much artistry here.
This is interesting because there's so much room for artistry and intensely complicated sets and costumes. I immediately think of the production by Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, where the set is this huge jungle gym of platforms and ladders (fig. 3), and the witch is literally turning into a tree as the story progresses (fig. 4), you can do things like that with a show like Into the Woods. But in Lapine’s production, set and costumes remain simple, and for the purpose of progressing plot, he does this because he doesn't need all of that, the story is strong enough on its own to fully delve into characterization and tell the story that way.
One of the main themes of Into the Woods is that everybody wants something, desperately. This is why they all go into the woods in the first place, but they all want different things. I'm going to deep dive into how Lapine represents this using the characters of Cinderella and The Baker & Baker’s Wife as examples. Let's start with Cinderella, you know the story. She wants to escape, to be in a happier place, as she says probably 8 million times in the musical “I wish to go to the festival” (Sondheim, 1988). Up until she finally gets to go to the festival, she is constantly blocked looking upwards, singing to the birds (fig. 5), talking to her mother (fig. 6). Even while preoccupied with work like doing her stepsisters hair, her sightlines are always upwards. Cinderella looking up alone is symbolic of so many aspects of her story. It’s more obviously foreshadowing that she is going to marry upwards into royalty, but it's also so perfectly represents the mental state of her character, the one stable thing about Cinderella’s mannerisms is that she is always looking upwards, her head is in the clouds, and she's dreaming of a better life. Ironically, guess what happens right after Cinderella gets her wish and goes to the ball? That's right, Lapine directs her to trip and fall to the ground every single time she enters (fig. 7). Why? She got what she wanted, she got to go to the festival, she went from her head being up in the clouds to being brought right back down to earth, literally. Cinderella’s Objective as well as her personal state of mind has changed. Her new objective is basically to figure out what's going on, as she says: “How can you know what you want, ‘till you get what you want, and you see if you like it? All I know is, what I want most of all, is to know what I want” (Sondheim, 1988). With her dreams becoming reality so quickly, that will drag someone back down to earth, and the tripping and falling is another double entendre, she's a little clumsy because she's so confused! She is so confused with her situation that in the end what is her decision? To leave her shoe behind and go back to her miserable life before her dreams came true and hope that a man puts in the effort to find her, please. But given this is a fairy tale it works out for her in the end, in the scene where the prince takes her back to the castle to get married, her dead mother in the trees sings to her, and her focus is dead center to conclude her first act story arc. With Cinderella specifically, sightlines seemed to be a pattern to represent how she was feeling.
The central characters of the story, The Baker and The Baker’s Wife, have a really interesting arc with how Lapine represents their objectives onstage. It should be obvious what they are: “The cow as white as milk, The cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, the slipper as pure as gold” (Sondheim, 1988). The objective is to retrieve the 4 items so that they can achieve their wish of having a child. Every single time one of the items is present onstage, the Baker and / or the Baker’s wife will be staring directly at it until they have retrieved it. This is also usually accompanied by the actors' entire bodies pivoting to wherever the item is. When the Baker & Bakers wife first sees Milky White, or, “The Cow as White as Milk” Lapine blocks the Baker’s Wife to grab the baker and physically turn him towards the cow (fig. 8). They stay like this for the remainder of the scene even talking to Jack while looking at the cow. While Jack’s current objective is to sell his cow, his superobjective is to keep his cow, which is a little confusing but what that means is that for this scene, he’s going to be a little flustered. The Baker and the Baker’s Wife take advantage of this by frantically deciding to trade him 5 beans for the cow and pretending they are magic. I suppose in the adrenaline rush of seeing the first of the items it must have slipped their minds that these beans are magic and they are the cause of the witch's ugliness. As the Witch says in the prologue: “Don't ever never ever mess around with my greens… Especially the beans” (Sondheim, 1988). But the baker and the Baker’s Wife decide to mess around with the beans anyway and it ends up literally killing almost every character in the show by the second act, but I suppose they don't know that now do they? They are so frantic to get these items they often overlook little details that do matter, and every time they look over these details, something will happen to make them regret it later. The pattern continues with the other three. The cape as red as blood: Upon seeing it for the first time, the Baker is pressured by the Witch to steal the cape, so he does. Also worth noting: The Baker has a little bit of dialogue with Little Red before he steals the cape, where once again, Lapine has him talking to the cape the entire time (fig. 9). While Little Red’s superobjective is to find security, the loss of her cape is terrifying and she begins to scream, the Baker gives it back to her. Frantically making decisions like this does not work, he does not receive the cape for good until he makes the calculated decision to kill the wolf, providing Little Red with enough security to surrender her cape. Two of the four! The hair as yellow as corn: The Baker’s Wife overhears Rapunzel's Prince talking about her, she finds the tower, she rips the hair off of Rapunzel like a wig off of a drag queen. Another impulsive decision, no punishment yet but later its revealed that hair is tainted and wont work because the witch touched it. The slipper as pure as gold: upon first seeing the slipper, the Baker's Wife gets so distracted by it that she lets the cow run away, attention split between the items for the first time; the back and forth movement also represents her current mental state, probably being super scrambled. The Baker’s Wife eventually gets the cow back, but then, it dies, because they retrieved it on an impulsive decision, dang. The Baker’s Wife has 3 more run-ins with Cinderella, where she literally tries to rip the shoe off of her foot, frantically, impulsively. Naturally, she does not succeed in obtaining the shoe this way (fig. 10). It isn't until she offers to trade her shoes with Cinderella, that she agrees, a conscious, thought through decision. Eventually the witch brings the cow back to life, they have all four, they get the child, objective completed! As the Second Act begins, they are determined to stop the giant as the royal family is incompetent and their house got destroyed. They are much more interactive with other characters for this act, focused on the people rather than the items. My personal favorite thing that Lapine did in the show comes in “Moments in the Woods” where the Baker’s wife reflects on everything that has happened thus far, and realizes the true meaning of why we all venture into the woods. On the last line of the song: “Now I understand, and it's time to leave the woods” (Sondheim, 1988), she pulls out a scrap of the red cape, one of the four items they had fought so hard for in the first act. She crumples it up and throws it off the stage (fig. 11). It doesn't matter anymore, what matters is the here and now, and even though that cape was so important earlier in the show, it no longer matters. Symbolically, right after realizing this, she dies. Like the piece of cape, she has fulfilled her role in the story.
Source: Into the Woods 52:18
The final thing Lapine did that I want to talk about is the choice to double cast some of the characters. Those being Cinderella's Prince/The Wolf, The Narrator/The Mysterious Man, and Cinderella’s Mother/Granny. Notably, the first two castings include pretty important characters, when double casting for convenience you could probably expect the stepsisters & the steward to be double cast in some way as well, but alas they stand alone. The double casting of these characters specifically is symbolic of their objectives as well, as they are the same. The Prince and the Wolf, to pursue, to acquire. The Narrator and The Mysterious Man both control the plot and keep the characters on track, to guide, to lead. Cinderella’s Mother and Granny both serve the purpose of protecting their family, typically through providing sound advice to them.
James Lapine’s directing style loves to highlight characterization, especially objectives. There's no need for large artistic spectacle, the story can stand alone. Although I have explained how this occurs in Into the Woods specifically, taking a look at some of his other productions like: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Falsettos, you will see this pattern. Even with its spectacle of a set coming together like a painting, Sunday in the Park with George also seems to prioritize character over anything else, which is what I believe makes James Lapine’s directing style so impactful.
Works Cited
Lapine, James, director. Into the Woods. DVD. American Playhouse, 1991.
“Into the Woods.” Open Air Theatre. Accessed February 10, 2022. https://openairtheatre.com/production/intothewoods.
Sondheim, Stephen, Prologue: Into the Woods, 1988.
Sondheim, Stephen, A Very Nice Prince, 1988.
Sondheim, Stephen, Moments in the Woods, 1988.
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