(Above: The cast of the Broadway revival of Into the Woods at the St. James Theatre. Photo by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
Into the Woods, the Stephen Sondheim musical about children’s fairytales that takes on an emotional darkness that adults can experience which is rooted in their childhoods, and MJ, the jukebox musical about Michael Jackson, an adult male who cloaked his own emotional darkness from his childhood with the patina of a childlike love of a fairytale-like narrative, are currently on Broadway. It was interesting to see them recently and realize how much they had in common. The Sondheim musical is a glorious and troubling retelling of a mishmash of Grimm tales. MJ - if it were being more honest - would have been a grim retelling of the Peter Pan story but in its dishonesty is simply troubling - even in its being so thrillingly entertaining which is finally the most troubling aspect of all.
My most vivid memory of Into the Woods doesn’t involve its original production, which I saw a few times, but when a song from its score, “No One Is Alone,” was sung at actor Peter Evans’s memorial service at Playwrights Horizons by Victor Garber in 1989 after Peter had died of AIDS. The tears I shed - the sense of loss I felt and the darkness continuing to descend upon my burgeoning adulthood in a cadenced cascade of Sondheim’s sounds and syllables - is something that took root inside me that day and has even now refused to budge, like a beanstalk no sorrowful lady giant could fell. Afterward, I hung out at the bar next door and shed more tears with Peter’s friend, playwright Wendy Wasserstein, and his partner, director Gerry Gutierrez, as we stood dazed in the awful wonderment of his really having died. Wendy and Gerry were later to die their own tragic early deaths. Death and loss and sorrow and yet somehow a hard-won wonder still able to be in the awful awe-filled mix is what Into the Woods is about to me - after, that is, we get through that overlong, fabulously silly first act that is just so damn fun. The second act is where it deepens into a shared adulthood that casts not a childlike shadow but is shadowed by childhood itself for the shade offered in those woods is really the shifting shadows our selves cast about us as we battle the giants that descend upon us - grief, despondency, desire, and greed. I find myself uttering “good grief” as I often listen to the score’s second act and realize that Sondheim is mining grief in that act for a sense of goodness as I have so often mined it for the same purpose in my own grief-filled life. But that is the genius of fairytales and the deeper genius of Sondheim’s having mined them in this show: we seekingly set out skipping innocently into the woods and end up standing in the stoic grown-up stillness of ourselves.
This latest Broadway revival got its start this past spring as a kitted-out concert version as part of New York City Center Encores! series. It has been directed with a sly economic beauty by Lear deBessonet. I have now seen this latest revival twice because my godson Kennedy Kanagawa is the puppeteer who “plays” Milky White, the cow, with his own sly beauty. So this is a godfather’s sentence: The rest of the cast assembled around him is remarkable. They could not be bettered. They are all brilliant. But I will cite Sara Bareilles as the Baker’s Wife, Patina Miller as the Witch, Phillipa Soo as Cinderella, Gavin Creel as both the Wolf and the Prince who was raised to be Charming but not sincere, and Julia Lester as Little Red Riding Hood. Some of my favorite Sondheim songs are in this show. Along with “No One Is Alone,” they are “Children Will Listen,” “I Know Things Now,” “Giants in the Sky,” “Moments in the Woods,” and “No More.” But the whole score is being given a stunning realization - more than a production - in this revival. As the lights rise on this realization of Sondheim’s masterpiece disguised as a Broadway musical, the audience gives it an ovation before it even starts. This is a musical finally about longing and the longing the audience has for it is palpable. I long to see it again.
(Above: Myles Frost as Michael Jackson in MJ at the Neil Simon Theatre. Photo by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
MJ - the musical about Michael Jackson - is a cow of a different color. I had no desire to see it. After doing so, I have rudely joked that as far as pedophile musicals go, it is a brilliant one. There is slyness at work here as well but it is not of the beautiful sort; it is instead put to use to cover up the ugliness of so much of this tortured man’s life, a life that passed on his pain to others as well as his musical brilliance. The book by Lynn Nottage, yes, slyly stops at 1992 since the story is about putting together Jackson’s “Dangerous” tour. There are references to “demons” a couple of times and “allegations” and a fear of questions from the press - but nothing specific is cited. Along with the Mickey-and-Judy update of the putting-on-a-show aspect of the book, there are flashbacks to the Jackson Five and Detroit and bubblegum pop and an abusive father (the only abuse Nottage’s book allows.) There is a moment, however, as Nottage’s book leads us into the flashback trope used in the narrative, when Jackson, in the rehearsal studio, puts his arm around a child of one of his backup singers to lead him into being Jackson himself in the flashback sections. There is a seductive quality to that young boy being led by Jackson the adult into being his childhood self. It was as deeply disturbing to me as it was maddeningly brief, a glancing glance of the man grooming a child for his own purposes. I don’t know if it was Nottage’s slyness at work to get such a moment past the Jackson family who certainly had to approve this show and its narrative thrust, but as someone who was molested myself, I saw the moment for what it was.
Christopher Wheeldon was a brilliant choice to direct and choreograph the show. I have been hot-and-cold about his balletic work but look forward to his future directing and choreographing other Broadway musicals because the musical numbers are some of the most stunningly realized and exciting I’ve seen in years. Myles Frost plays Jackson with his own cunningly childlike slyness for the man was literally slithering in his own cynical slyness. Frost won the Tony for his portrayal which transcends impersonation but he is so good I wondered if he could do anything else. Will he end up a highly-paid Jackson impersonator in Vegas with a Tony in his dressing room? I hope not. I trust his talents run deeper than that.
Into the Woods once more got me in touch with my sorrow as an adult based on my experiences as a child. That was purposeful. That was Sondheim’s brilliance. MJ got me in touch with my sorrow as a molested child which has shadowed me as an adult. That was not purposeful but it was the shadow itself that hung over this entertainment. There was a Grimm danger in Sondheim’s woods but it was confronted. The danger in MJ is that the grimness of his life was not confronted but so entertainingly denied. That is more than “Dangerous” itself. It is downright diabolical to pass it off as a Broadway musical and to do it with such brilliance and expertise. MJ is indeed a nice piece of Broadway panache. But to quote Sondheim in Into the Woods in a song that Red Riding Hood sings about the Wolf - which a child could have sung, come to think of it, about Michael Jackson himself - “nice is different than good.”
Two excellent reviews—I love experiencing theater through your writing!
I was fortunate to see INTO THE WOODS in previews ‘way back when along with precious friend Robin Wagner. It was a stunning theatrical experience that still resonates. Maybe I’ll jump on a bird and do it again, if I can pry Robin out of his books and beach.