Into the Woods

I'm teaching a class this coming semester on fairy-tales and fairy-tale adaptations. It's gonna be sweet; I'm incorporating some of the best short stories and poetry I can find, as well as turning to TV and film adaptations.

And I think I'll end the class with a two- or three-day lesson on the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods. If you're not familiar with this play, it weaves together several of the most iconic Western fairy-tales into one story which ends up being, in some respects, an anti-fairy-tale.

The story starts with several characters wishing for something. Cinderella wishes to go to the festival, Jack wishes his cow would give some milk, and Little Red Riding Hood wishes for some bread to give her granny. The lynchpin that holds all of these stories together is a Baker and his Wife, who have been cursed by the local Witch to be childless. They, of course, wish for a child.

At first all of these wishes seem disconnected, the isolated dreams of people whose wishes could never interfere with each other's. But it turns out each person's wish affects someone else's. And the overarching wish is the Witch's, who wants to be young and beautiful again. To do that, she needs a potion filled with special ingredients--a cow as white, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, a slipper as pure as gold. You see where this is going . . .

She cons the couple into finding these ingredients for her, promising to lift the curse when they do. But as they go out into the woods, they find that following their quest for a child sometimes means taking away someone else's wish. How can Jack get his wish, to keep his best friend the Cow, if the Baker and his Wife take the Cow? How can Red Riding Hood remain safe in the woods if they steal her cape? (They don't, but she doesn't stay safe anyways; capes are not good protection.) How can Cinderella dance with the prince at the festival if her golden shoe is taken? And how can Rapunzel ever escape from the tower if they cut off her golden braid?

Basically, getting what you want means someone else doesn't get what they want. Wishing is selfish.

The first song, the Prologue, makes it clear that this is not a new issue; singleminded, selfish wishing started this whole problem when the Baker's father stole the Witch's greens (and her magic beans) for his pregnant wife, thus causing her to age and grow ugly, thus causing her to curse his family. I guess it's a bit like that old OUAT saw, "Magic always comes with a price." Except this time it's wishing.

At the end of the first act, however, the conflict between the different wishes has been resolved. Everyone has their wish, and they all seem poised to live happily ever after.

Except for two niggling things.

First, at her mother's grave, Cinderella was asked the question: "Are you certain what you wish is what you want?" The first time I saw Into the Woods, before I knew what to expect, this question, thrown away in the middle of a song, rang out like a gong in my head. How many times had I asked myself that same question? How many times had I gotten what I wished, only to find out it wasn't what I wanted? Even as I watched every character get their wish, that question seemed a warning. (Well, also the fact that it was only the end of Act One.)

Second, the beanstalk. The second beanstalk.

The second half of the show is when everything goes to shit. Because, in real life, even when the story seems over, the story continues. And there are always consequences. (See above, re: magic and prices.)

Jack, after escaping from the giant with the harp to buy his Cow back from the Baker, chopped down the stalk and killed the giant. Now, after everyone's happily-ever-after, the Giantess from above has come down the second beanstalk to seek revenge for her husband's death. A lot of sad, senseless things happen; Rapunzel, Jack's mother, and the Baker's Wife each die accidentally. And ultimately, Jack has to help kill the Giantess, his friend, the "lady giant" who gave him food and rest and affection.

The second half of the show dispels the magical thinking that people so often associate with fairy-tales. Nobody's happily-ever-after looks like what they hoped it would look like. The Baker and his Wife realize that having a child is a lot of work. The Princes get bored with their wives. The Witch gains her youth and beauty, only to lose her daughter Rapunzel. Things go wrong for the characters who thought of themselves as "good," while their enemies are unmasked as not merely "bad," but as people who are motivated by the same urges--grief, revenge, lust, boredom, etc.--that drive themselves.

The glorious thing about this musical is that it comments on almost any universal literary theme you can think of: Age vs. youth, experience vs. innocence, parents vs. children, good vs. bad (or, in one of the play's most pointed lyrics, good vs. "nice"). If fairy-tales are the ur-stories that continue to get retold and remixed and recast in literature and film ad infinitum, then Into the Woods is the uber-story. It has it all.

The film version of which, directed by Rob Marshall, was released on Christmas Day. I saw it last Friday and loved it. It is a decent and enjoyable film adaptation of the musical; the acting from almost everyone was top-notch, but I particularly loved Emily Blunt's Baker's Wife. However, the film does gloss over or leave out some pretty important material--Rapunzel's death, the Mysterious Man, the Princes' boredom with their wives, the touching relationship between Jack and the Giantess. I'm thinking about asking my students to read the book/libretto of the musical and compare it to the film in the last week of class, but I don't have any experience teaching from a musical script, so I'll have to do my homework ahead of time. Anyone got any tips for using texts like this in a classroom?

Bitter Greens: Gorgeous historical novel blended with fairytale

Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth is a marvelous re-telling of Rapunzel, woven together with historical fiction that gives the reader a glimpse into the life of Charlotte Rose de Caumont de La Force, the French noblewoman who first published the fairy tale. Forsyth, pursuing her doctorate in fairy-tale retellings in Sydney, originally published in this novel in her native Australia. It has just been released in the US.

Bitter Greens begins with the story of Charlotte, exiled from the court of Louis XIV, the Sun King, and locked in a nunnery. Through her narrative, we learn that she was a vivacious courtier whose passion and wit would not be contained. Early in the novel, her mother tells the young Charlotte that she could have been a troubadour; instead, as an adult, she has left scandal in her wake and written some saucy stories that have gotten her banished from the king’s presence. Charlotte was a real person, and while Forsyth imagines many personal details, conversations, and relationships for her protagonist, the major plot points refer to actual events and historical personages.

Nested into this narrative is the storytelling of Soeur Seraphina, who begins to relate the tale of Margherita (or Persinette, which is French for “parsley,” a bitter green similar to the rapunzel plant) to the captive and captivated La Force as they work together in the nunnery’s garden. Margherita was a prisoner, too, taken from her loving parents and imprisoned in a tower where her fiery red hair is braided together with the hair of the tower’s seven previous inhabitants. She amuses herself by singing, attracting the interest of a young Italian nobleman passing by. This section of the novel differs slightly in tone from the rest, ultimately taking on a more mythical, symbolic quality like a fairy tale:

The panorama of dawn was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Vast and strange, the sky stretched above her, streaked with long clouds like a girl’s hair flying, coloured crimson and rose and blue and gold.

Finally, Bitter Greens tells the story of Selena Lionelli, La Strega Bella, the beautiful witch who captures young red-headed girls for her own nefarious purposes. It is she who kidnaps Margherita, renames her Persinette, and tries to convince her that her parents abandoned her. But despite her cruelty, Lionelli manages to gain our sympathy through the telling of her own story. Her past as an orphan, a Venetian courtesan, and the muse of the painter Titian was, for me, the most interesting part of the novel.

Forsyth’s prose is confident and colorful. The stories of Charlotte and Selena are told in first person, while Margherita’s is told in third person. This contributes to the sense of distance and dreaminess that the fairy-tale retelling demands, while allowing Charlotte and Selena a presence and reality that helps readers to connect with them on an emotional level, despite the difference in customs and cultures.

Each of these stories sheds light on the others and La Force learns about both fortitude and kindness as she listens to Soeur Seraphina’s tales. What I particularly loved about the novel was its focus on the power of storytelling and of women’s voices. Sixteenth-century Italy and seventeenth-century France were not bastions of intellectual or personal freedom for women. Despite this, each of the three protagonists uses her voice to create her own destiny, even when everyone else tries to silence her. Bitter Greens shows the historical consequences and the personal cost of speaking out against power and the dominant ideology while still convincing us to share our own stories.

*This review originally appeared at FantasyLiterature.com, where I gave the book 4 1/2 stars.

Splash: A Twist on the Little Mermaid Fairytale

I recently watched the film Splash for the first time in twenty years or so. It was every bit as enjoyable as I'd remembered, but what I noticed this time that I hadn't really picked up on as a child is the fairy-tale nature of the story. Splash takes Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and turns it into what Bruno Bettelheim might consider a true fairy tale, while updating it to the modern age.

The story starts out in the past, communicated by sepia-toned film and extra-sparkly water. Allen Bauer is a little boy on a boat, fascinated by something he sees out in the water. When he jumps in the water, his parents understandably freak out. However, the underwater shot shows him to be safe, floating effortlessly just beneath the surface, gazing into the eyes of a young mermaid who smiles at him. When he is retrieved from the water, the mermaid cries.

Flash-forward twenty years. Allan Bauer, played by an adorably awkward Tom Hanks, is a successful business-owner in New York City. He ends up falling into the ocean again and is rescued by the same mermaid, all grown up and played by Daryl Hannah, who is incandescent. This time, the mermaid decides that she loves Allan and that she wants to be with him, so she takes the form of a human woman with legs.

Allan and the mermaid, who takes the name Madison after Madison Avenue, spend a delightful few days in NYC. She learns English after only a few hours of watching television, and struggles to understand the human/American cultural norms she is surrounded by, such as wearing clothing, not eating lobster with your hands, etc. However, she is clear about the terms of their relationship: she has to leave after six days, or she can never return to where she came from. Allan thinks that there's just an immigration problem, so he offers to marry her. Before they can do this, however, she is doused with water and captured by a kooky scientist, played by Eugene Levy, who is ecstatic that he can now prove the existence of mermaids.

Splash mirrors the tale of The Little Mermaid in several ways. The mermaid saves the human man; she goes on land to be with him; but the terms of her time on land have limits After all, as Walter would say, "this is not 'Nam; there are rules" ... just as in every fairy tale or magical bargain. Apparently the movie originally even included a scene in which mermaid-Madison visits a sea-hag to make the bargain. However, the rule here does not mandate that she can't talk; it just puts a time limit on what Andersen makes clear--that once you become human, you never go back. The movie also anticipates the later Disney film, with the whimsical scenes portraying Madison's encounter with human culture. It's not too far a leap to imagine Madison trying to comb her hair with a fork, like Ariel. 

The big difference between Splash and Andersen's version is that Splash has a happy ending. But the ending doesn't involve the mermaid staying on land; it involves Allan going into the sea, to join Madison there. For him, the terms are the same: he can't go home. 

It's interesting that the ultimate transformation happens to him, and not her. This flipped ending makes me reevaluate the film's message entirely; rather than being a fairy-tale about a mermaid, it's a fairy-tale about a man. At the beginning of the film, Allan's burden is that he cannot love. Through the journey of his relationship with Madison, he learns that he can--and the effect of that knowledge is a transformation.

I also like how, even though the story is modernized, the film is book-ended with two underwater sequences that preserve the dreamy, otherworldly atmosphere of the fairy-tale. 

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Novel

This retelling of Hamlet, by David Hewson and A.J. Hartley, is fairly straightforward. It doesn't depart from the basic plot events or thematic issues as we are familiar with them in Shakespeare, nor is it particularly inventive in language or structure. This surprised me at first, as I expected a more meta or avant garde treatment of this most classic of texts.

What it does do is deepen the characterization of each of the major characters. In Hewson and Hartley's version, we understand the myriad reasons for Old Hamlet's murder, for Fortinbras' invasion of Denmark, for young Hamlet's halting confusion. We get a lot of backstory, as well--glimpses into the rigid mind of Polonius, the deep love between Claudius and Gertrude, and Hamlet's lonely childhood.

The two places where Hewson and Hartley change the actual plot the most revolve around two relatively minor characters in Shakespeare's play: Voltemand and Yorick, respectively. In their story, the Norwegian ambassador Voltemand takes on a much larger, and more sinister, role, masterminding several of the play's many twists and turns, including Ophelia's "suicide." 

Perhaps the largest change is that Yorick is still alive in this play and sticks close to Hamlet, helping him figure out what has already happened and what he should do about it, as well as providing some sharp-tongued comic relief for the beleaguered prince. His existence is explained near the end in what, to me, was a somewhat tired twist (think Fight Club) but his presence during the novel is wonderful, as his dialogue is rife with jokes, puns, and literary references galore. 

This Hamlet provides a nice focus on the father/son relationship and the tensions therein, also a major theme of Shakespeare's play. The several father figures in the novel--old Hamlet, Claudius, Polonius, and even Yorick himself--prompt us to ask if the son must take after his father? What duty does a son have toward his father, even if the father does not treat him well? The character backgrounds Hewson and Hartley create make it clear that, if Hamlet had been able to just get over his father's death and forgive Claudius (who had been more like a father to him than Old Hamlet), his life would have been good. He would have experienced love, peace, and fulfillment, possibly marrying Ophelia and taking the crown after Claudius' death. With this understanding, Hamlet's compulsion to avenge a father who never cared for him is even more tragic than in the play.

The theater nerd in me loved that the players were an English theatre troupe composed of actors known to have worked with Shakespeare himself: Richard Burbage, Will Kempe, and the like. They are in Denmark to make some money while the plague is in London, an actual theatrical practice. Well, maybe not as far as Denmark, but theatre companies did travel in the winter and during plague outbreaks. The novel also made much of the language of theater, as does the original play. And Hartley is just the writer to give us this theatrical grounding. He is, after all, a professor of Shakespeare in the theater department at UNC-Charlotte. 

I listened to this book read by Richard Armitage (of Hobbit fame) and it was the best reading I've ever heard--great character voices, great accents, great acting!