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[0:00] David Armstrong: White, a blank page or canvas. The challenge, bring order to the whole. Through design, composition, tension, balance, light and harmony. Welcome to Broadway Nation. I'm David Armstrong and my guest again this week is Richard Schoch, who is the author of the much acclaimed book, How Sondheim Can Change Your Life. This week, Richard reveals the inner workings of two of Sondheim's greatest musicals, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. One of the great privileges and pleasures of creating and hosting this podcast over the past five years has been the opportunity to meet and interact and become friends with so many brilliant musical theater authors and historians. And I owe them so much because they inspired me to take the concept and themes of this podcast and of the course that I teach at the University of Washington School of Drama and expand them into my own first book, which is titled Broadway Nation, How Immigrant Jewish, Queer and Black Artists Invented the Broadway Musical.

As many of you know, it was published just weeks ago by Matthew and Drama, which is an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. And so far, I'm thrilled to report that the response has been terrific. Professor Stacey Wolf of Princeton University and the author of the amazing book, Changed for Good, A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical, writes that David Armstrong's Broadway Nation is a lively, engaging, and fascinating journey through the vibrant history of the Broadway musical. Whether you're a historian, a theater maker, or a passionate fan, Broadway Nation is an important and impossible to put down tribute to the diverse voices behind the Great White Way. Wow, thank you, Stacey. I'm especially pleased that the publishers have released the book both in hardcover and paperback simultaneously and have priced the paperback at only $34.95.

You can find it everywhere books are sold, but I recommend that you go to the publisher's website, bloomsbury.com, where you'll receive a 10% discount. If you enjoy this podcast, I know that you will love the book. Now let's talk about one of those Jewish and queer inventors of the Broadway musical, Stephen Sondheim. Here we go. Let's now jump to another challenging character, a character that audiences are often don't know how to feel about, and that is George and Sunday in the Park with George. I think we have to say that both Act One George, George Surratt, and Act Two George, his great grandson, who's an American multimedia artist, they are not really likable characters. They're unlikable in different ways.

George Surratt is abrupt, surly, gruff, disdainful, contemptuous even. You get the sense he feels superior to everybody, including the people who don't think very much of his paintings. Great grandson George is a huckster, a showman. His business is art, but really he's a sellout. He's a hustler, always trying to get a commission. He's working on his seventh Chromoloom. Could you do something new, please? You've got seven Chromolooms. So they're not particularly likable characters, which is to say they're very Sondheimian characters, but this creates an issue for the audience. We've just talked about how in some way, Sweeney, if not likable, is understandable. Mrs. Lovett is likable from the beginning, but it becomes an issue for the audience if you're finding it hard to sympathize with the lead characters in a show.

It's easy to sympathize with Dot, his model, his muse, his lover, and also I think even with Marie, who is Dot's daughter but now 90 years old in Act 2. On the one hand, it's a problem for the audience, which is, ah, that's a barrier. I really don't know how to find my way into this show if the characters are so unlikable. And then we see George treating Dot pretty badly. You know, he won't go to the Follies with her, although he promised. So that's the least of his sins. He doesn't even want to see the child that he fathers with her. That becomes Marie. That's the baby that becomes Marie. And then he paints over the painting he did of Dot. And he said he was going to give it to her. And not only does he not give it to her, he paints over it.

He erases her. He defaces and obliterates her. So he's not a particularly nice guy. And yet, I think that there's a point to this. Because I really do think Sunday in the Park with George, and this is why my subtitle is How to Be an Artist. I really do think Sunday in the Park with George meditates on the fact that we are all capable of being artists in our own life. Not in an obvious or overt way that we are all composers or sculptors or painters. Not in that formal sense. But that life itself can be a work of art. And we can create it as an artist would. That is to say, we can live by adopting the habits and mindsets of an artist. Which is to look, to notice, to pay attention, to be present, to be mindful, to be in the moment.

All the things that Dot finds difficult to do. The show opens with her trying to be still and present in the moment. And she can't. But it ends with Dot in Move On saying, all the things you gave to me, notice every tree. George essentially taught her how to see and to look and to notice and to be still. Those are all the gifts, gifts that George teaches Dot by the end of the show. And for me, that's the larger, ultimate question here, which is, if we all want to think that being an artist is something innate in our being, that we are entitled to it just by virtue of being alive, well, what would that mean? It would mean learning how to be still, learning how to notice, learning how to look.

Look, look, as George says to his mother in that wonderful song, beautiful. And here, I think if George 1 and George 2 were easy to love, very sympathetic, very agreeable, very charming, slick, lovable characters, we would never get to the more profound insight of Sunday in the Park with George, which is that it is perhaps the greatest achievement of any human being to be able to really look at what is happening, to really notice and to really be present and to be present to your own reality, not fighting it, not fearing it, not running away from it, not even necessarily trying to change it, but to be in the midst of it. And the beautiful image which Sondheim and Lapine give us in the first five minutes is Dot in her heavy corseted dress trying to stay still as George sketches her on a hot Sunday afternoon in the park on the island of La Grande Jatte.

So I think the price we have to pay for the thematic richness of Sunday in the Park with George, the price we have to pay is that neither of the Georges is a very nice guy. What's so fascinating about that is that the authors lean into the idea of the artist as the other, as somebody who is not like normal people, not like regular people, you know, is a trope that we have in life that artists are separate from society, from the average person. They underline that, that this is true of George. And yet, as you say, that's a tool to get us to appreciate what the artists then can do for us as society and how much we are all artists ourselves. It's a very odd dichotomy that the show is working with there.

And again, I think it's interesting that as opposed to Sweeney Todd, which tells a very linear, very plotted story, we now have a non-linear, non-sensical, in a way, story structure for this or a lack of story structure where we're resolving the love story with one different character a hundred years later in the second act with a person who's dead, who's coming back as a ghost. There is almost no story logic to the show itself in a traditional sense. That's absolutely right. If you're looking for a unified, linear plot, a narrative arc, consistency of character, all those things, as you say, that you find in Sweeney Todd, you are not going to find it in Sunday in the Park with George. You know, I think critical debates around Sunday, you know, there are people who are just, Sunday is not for me.

I love some of the songs, but it's the show that is not for me. Of course, people are entitled to their own response, but there's a body of even Sondheim fans for whom Sunday is just a bridge too far. So the critical debate has always centered on, it feels like two shows, that the first act of Sunday in the Park with George, some people say, is a perfect one-act musical. Why did they not just bring down the curtain and have it as a glorious one-act musical? Because the second act, my God, what is that? The 1980s, the Chromalume, the great-great-grandmother, this new character, great-grandson George that we don't know about, don't care very much about. He seems very unhappy. Nobody seems to like him.

I do not understand what is going on. But Sondheim and Lapine always insisted that it is one unified show. And on the surface, it's not the right word, but on the level of plot and character, and even locale, there are dramatic changes. As you've said, 100 years, it goes from France to America. There are new characters. Dot seems to come back and talks to great-grandson George as if he was George Seurat, but maybe he is also George Seurat. It's all very mystical at the end. But Lapine and Sondheim said it is one show. And Sondheim himself said it is one great love story that takes 100 years to resolve itself. And of course, it resolves itself in Move On. You will remember, as your listeners will, that towards the end of Act One, Dot and George sing, We Do Not Belong Together.

And then, of course, Dot and George, which George is it, who knows, sing Move On at the end of Act Two. It is the same song. Mandy Patinkin, who created the role, or roles, of George and George, played it for a year, I think. It was months before Mandy Patinkin, who is singing these songs eight times a week, it was months before he realized that We Do Not Belong Together and Move On were the same song. So I think we can forgive ourselves if we don't kind of pick that up on the first hearing. But the point is that the unity of this show is not in time. It's not in space or geography. It's not in plot. It's not in character. It's in sound. It's the music that makes Sunday in the Park with George one show and one linked show.

There is a musical consistency to the entire show. And the resolution of the relationship, of the fractured relationship between George and Dot is the central relationship of the show. That relationship gets healed. They are restored. We have always belonged together in music, not in action, in this phantom appearance, which may exist only in George's mind. But the resolution happens in the musical reprise. It's one of those shows that we have to, like Pacific Overtures, have to surrender ourselves to. And here I would offer Jules, the official, you know, Academy painter, and everyone knows, who doesn't like George's work at all. And he says, but you cannot even see the faces. You know, the curse, curse is the wrong word.

But the plight of someone like Jules is that he's looking for the wrong thing. There are no faces in Surat's painting, because he's a pointillist painter. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. That's what he does in Color and Light. When you look up close, there are no faces. When you stand back, you can sort of see something like a face, which also comes up in Finishing the Hat. So Jules is looking in the wrong place. And I would say we should remember Jules when we jump to a criticism of Sunday in the Park with George, because we may be looking in the wrong place for how the show works. It doesn't work in character. It doesn't work in plot. It doesn't work in chronology. It doesn't work in geography.

It works its magic, and it works its healing in music. And we know that it is successful, because everybody cries in Move On. If you are not moved to tears by Move On, you have a heart of stone. It is one of the most transcendent three, four, five minutes on the musical theater.

[14:28] Richard Schoch: Why? Because the whole show has now arrived at the place that it needs to arrive. So the fact that we are moved by that last number tells us at a gut emotive level that the show has worked. Not that we had to suffer through Act 2 to get to this beautiful song, but we've been on an incredible journey and now it has resolved itself in the way that a musical resolution is very satisfying to the ear. This is, if you will, very satisfying to the heart.

[15:01] David Armstrong: I completely agree. And I'm one of the people that, from the beginning, made the leap into the premise. I understand why people have trouble with it. But for me, I always thought the point of the show is the second act. And the same thing with Into the Woods. People have similar complaints about Into the Woods, that somehow we should just do the first act because it's so perfect. For both of those shows, the first acts are perfect and brilliant, but are ultimately empty for me without the second act. That's where the show actually is. The meaning of the show. You talked about Move On being so moving and everyone cries, but you also point out in the book that we would not be moved by that so heavily if it were not for the piece that comes before that. Lesson Number Eight.

[15:44] Richard Schoch: Yes. Lesson Number Eight, which George sings, George II, sings on the island of La Grande Jatte in the 1980s, and it looks nothing like it looked in the 1880s. And he has Dot's little red grammar book, which he inherited from his grandmother Marie, who died before he could make the trip. It's a very poignant moment. He's sad because his grandmother has died. He is disconsolate in himself because he's aware the well has run dry for artistic ideas. As you said, he's a sellout. He feels at rock bottom as an artist. He feels alone. The island of La Grande Jatte is a massive disappointment. There's really nothing very positive in his life at that moment. Then he opens the book and starts to read, and he reads the same grammar lesson, Lesson Number Eight, which I think is brilliant because there are seven chroma looms, but he's reading Lesson Number Eight.

[17:13] David Armstrong: Interesting.

[17:13] Richard Schoch: So he's moving on, but in a better way. And I only really thought about that fairly recently. I thought, I've known this show for 40 years, and it only just dawned on me seven to eight. So always surprises with Sondheim and Lapine. I love the song Lesson Number Eight, and I always encourage my students to do it because I think it's an underrated number. Technically, it's not especially difficult, but the character's journey is a profound one. We see George at the museum. He's a schmoozer. We see him performing, and that's why we have these cutouts. Who is the real George? We see the flimflam George, the one who shakes hands all the time and tries to get the donors to give him commissions. But who's the real George? Well, now we see who it is. You know, someone depressed, alone, sad, grieving, and he allows himself to feel all of these feelings for the first time in the second act.

[18:18] ♪ Musical number ♪

[19:18] Richard Schoch: But he finds solace and hope and encouragement and guidance, and not, I should say, in a schmaltzy, cheesy, sentimental way. Not at all. But he finds hope and encouragement in Dot's grammar book in Lesson Number Eight. And that is how he reconnects to the family tree and to, if you will, the family tree of art, to the tradition of art from which he feels disconnected, and how he connects to his own family, even though he's just lost the person most important to him, Marie.

[20:31] David Armstrong: So it seems to me that Lesson Number Eight is a turning point for George, so that he is then able to listen to Dot when she appears, and gently scolds him for not working on something new. He is able to listen to her in the way that previously she had listened to him. But without Lesson Number Eight and the preparedness that comes out of that song, he's now ready to look and notice and pay attention and be present and mindful. George at the museum exhibition hall, he's anything but present. He's flitting around. He's not mindful. He's not noticing. He's up on the trapeze. That's one of Sondheim's lyrics. But now George has kind of rediscovered the attitude, character, mindset of an artist, so that in that final scene, Move On, it works, because George is ready to hear what Dot has to say.

What I find extraordinary is that Lesson Number Eight, which most people would think of, and why not, as a throwaway song, because musically it pales in comparison to Move On, but dramatically it's a tremendously important song. But Sondheim did not write it until the show was already in previews at the Booth Theatre, and they were just a couple days away from opening.

[21:55] Richard Schoch: In the great Sondheim tradition, you know, this crime of the century overlooked at the Tony Awards, though it won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. But in development, in rehearsals, people were not really enthusiastic about Sunday in the Park with George. And what do they call it?

[22:10] David Armstrong: Sunday in the Dark. I always heard that. Clark is the trucking company where once the show closes on Broadway, Clark moving will take the set away. The line that was going around at the time was Monday in the Truck with Clark.

[22:22] Richard Schoch: Oh God, even worse. Well, you know, that's the blob speaking, and this time the blob was proved wrong. So they were days away, and Sondheim wrote Lesson Number Eight. Charles Kimbrough, who played Jules in the original production, he was also in the original production of Company, but Charles Kimbrough later said that song changed everything. He said it was like the keystone in an arch. And of course, the keystone in the arch is at the top. It's not the heaviest stone in the arch. The heaviest ones are at the bottom. It's one of the lightest stones, but it brings the arch together. It holds everything together. This is a brilliant metaphor that Kimbrough chose because without Lesson Number Eight, the show doesn't hold together. It's light musically, but it accomplishes something vital. And Kimbrough said we knew the show was working because after Lesson Number Eight, that's when we got standing ovations.

[23:17] David Armstrong: And it took that one song, four minutes, to pull it all together. So thank you for showing the love for Lesson Number Eight.

[23:24] Richard Schoch: Well, and it just shows how hard this medium is. It's one of the most difficult human enterprises is making a successful musical because there was that one little missing piece that they might never have discovered like so many other shows that never discovered the missing piece. And all the brilliance that was there never saw the light of day because that piece was left undiscovered or was never revealed.

[23:48] David Armstrong: Yes. Imagine Little Night Music without Send in the Clowns, which is also written at the very last minute. But again, it makes what I think is a point that cannot be overestimated. You need the audience to tell you what kind of show you have and what kind of show you don't have.

[24:05] Richard Schoch: And what it's even about.

[24:11] David Armstrong: And what it's about. That's previews and the old out-of-town tryouts. That's what they were for. Let's move on now to what I think of as sort of the parallel show with Sunday in the Park with George, which is Into the Woods.

[24:22] ♪ Musical number ♪

[24:41] David Armstrong: Don't go away. Richard and I will be back with more Broadway Nation right after this quick break.

[24:49] David Armstrong: Let's move on now to what I think of as sort of the parallel show with Sunday in the Park with George, which is Into the Woods. Because I've always been struck and I remember being struck at the time, both shows resolve the story at the end of Act One and then have a second act that goes what happens after the end of the story. In this case, what happens after Happily Ever After. I think it's interesting that Sondheim wrote these two shows back to back that use that same device. I've also been always curious about how much that device reflects the fantastics, which nobody ever seems to talk about. Was that a direct influence? And of course, the fantastics was still running well into 20 years or so at that point when they wrote the show.

Did that have any impact? And I've always thought also that It's Hot Up Here is sort of a paraphrase of This Plum is Too Ripe, which opens the second act of the fantastics. And I don't mean that in a disparaging way at all. Art is often inspired by other art and you find your own way to reinterpret it. Somebody always said, you know, amateurs borrow and professionals steal.

[25:54] Richard Schoch: I think that's because professionals then steal and then reinvent it and make it entirely their own, even though they've borrowed this idea from somebody else. It's fascinating. Of course, no show is ever created in isolation. Artists exist in a network or an ecosystem, which kind of goes back, I'll just go on a quick tangent, back to Sunday. The idea that we have this romantic notion of the artist as alone, aloof, the singular genius working by herself, himself, up in the attic. But the reality is just what you've said, which is that there is a community of artists who are all sharing, giving and taking simultaneously. So the idea that any piece of musical theatre can be created in a vacuum is simply untrue.

[26:42] David Armstrong: Yeah, I'm fascinated by that. In my own book, I focus on the interaction of all these artists over history and in the present time, whatever present time they're living in, there's so many examples of how they're encouraging each other, talking to each other, responding to each other that seldom get discussed. We don't think of it as being a collective that is in some ways making these shows, even if not directly. But I do think that's the reality of the situation.

[27:10] Richard Schoch: For sure.

[27:10] David Armstrong: Talking about those two halves of Into the Woods, you say it's a musical whose two halves appear to contrast more than they compare. What do you mean by that?

[27:16] Richard Schoch: I meant simply what we talked about a few minutes ago, which is that on a surface level, on an appearance level, Sunday and Into the Woods, it seems, well, there's a first act and a second act, and they don't relate. They seem like they're from different shows and there's some kind of disconnect. So somehow there's work for the audience to do, which is somehow accommodate or reconcile or surrender themselves to the different things that happen in act two than in act one. I was just pointing out that these are shows that in some ways have two acts that seem very different. But of course, I would always want to insist, and I'm hardly alone on this, which is that underneath Ah, but Underneath, the song Follies that was cut, Ah, but Underneath, there's unity to the show.

That's as true for Into the Woods as it is for Sunday in the Park with George. As a lot of your listeners will know, there's a one act version of Into the Woods called Into the Woods Jr., licensed by MTI, Music Theatre International, for performance in schools, middle schools. So 12, 13, 14 year old, something around that. It's not for eight year old, it's not for high school, but it's just act one. And I think over 3 million kids have seen Into the Woods Jr. And it's only the first act because someone that young cannot handle the darkness of the second act of Into the Woods. So Into the Woods Jr. is kind of a Sondheim gateway drug, right? Chances are if you're under 30, Into the Woods is your first Sondheim show.

[28:57] Richard Schoch: But you may know only Act One. So Act Two is this sort of, you know, the adult, the grown-up, the darker, the more serious follow-on. I understand, of course, why for a child, it would only be Act One. But I find it interesting, this proposition that we can sever Act One from Act Two. Because Sondheim and Lapine themselves often said that the trajectory, if we want to think of a single trajectory or a single arc for Into the Woods, it's about growing up and moral responsibility and looking after each other and the importance of the community over all the individual selfish desires we see being played out by everybody in Act One, how the situation changed. So in Act One, the characters are pursuing, they're literally pursuing their individual paths through the darkness of the woods to, you know, get what they need, if you find what you need, and you get it and you take it.

But Act Two is, we have to stick together or we die, to put it in a nutshell. That's Act Two. So in a sense, you know, if the message of Into the Woods is how to be responsible and grow up and live in a community, that seems to me something that an adolescent ought to hear, not just a reinforcement of childhood fairy tales. It's consoling, but it is not enriching for them. You must see Act Two.

[30:25] David Armstrong: I agree. Act Two is the point of the show. Although, you know, I think that Sondheim was the instigator of the junior system. This was the first show to do that. Stacy Wolfe has a book where she talks about that, Beyond Broadway is the name of the book. She recounts that whole story of how Sondheim and Hal Prince and other people were worried that musicals were going to disappear, and they knew that school productions were a key to that, getting young people to experience these shows early on. And when they were approached about doing a junior version of Into the Woods, Sondheim was very supportive of that. So he's the one who said, let's just do the first act. Although I think he ultimately thought, well, then when they get to high school, they'll do Act Two. And sometimes they do. So I hope I didn't misspeak. I was certainly not suggesting that Into the Woods Junior is a bad thing. I'm saying it's an incomplete.

[31:22] Richard Schoch: No, I didn't think you were saying that, but yes. I just want to clear that up. And of course, you know, also Sondheim would joke that Into the Woods in a short form or a long form would always be popular with kids, because it's a fairytale setting. And he kind of joked it'll be a nice little earner for us, you know, over the decades. No doubt it has been. And one of the loveliest things, you know, Sondheim was known for writing back to pretty much everybody who wrote him. If he were not obviously deranged, he would write back. But he especially wrote back to school groups doing Into the Woods, who must have been thrilled. Even a two-line letter from Stephen Sondheim must be over the moon that he would always say essentially the same thing, not because it's trite and the easy way out, but because it's important and true. And David, you as a director, will understand this very well. Sondheim always said to every school group doing Into the Woods, have fun with it. If you are having fun, so will the audience.

[32:20] David Armstrong: In this chapter, you focus primarily on the baker's wife. Why was that the thing that fascinated you most about Into the Woods?

[32:28] Richard Schoch: For each chapter that I worked on in the book, I didn't start with a roadmap. I revisited the material where there were videos. I watched videos. I listened to the score. I read music, so I went through the score myself. I read the libretti. And then, you know, I tried to do what I talked about George and Dot doing, and I tried to pay attention and notice and be present and look and listen. So I went in simply asking the question, what stands out for me in this show? What is resonating for me? What am I drawn to? Where is the light shining for me in this show? For every person, it will be different. And for the same person, it will be different at different times. That's the remarkable quality of the theatre.

But as I was going through Into the Woods, I thought, for me, it's the baker's wife. More specifically, it's what happens to her after she kisses the prince. Why does she go back? So I wasn't sure whether I approved of this decision or disapproved of this decision. It's not for me to approve or disapprove. But I thought, this is a dilemma, or to use the Oscar Hammerstein lyric, "'tis a puzzlement." I thought, this character is a puzzle. The other ones I get. But for me, this is an interesting character. I want to enter her reality. And for me, of course, it was crystallized in the wonderful, wonderful song, which I always encourage my students to perform, Moments in the Woods.

[34:03] ♪ Musical number: "Moments in the Woods" — performed by the Baker's Wife ♪

[36:54] Richard Schoch: There's a real journey, a 180-degree turn in this song where, in short, she decides not to stay with the prince, follow him in the woods, but to go home to her baker and their newborn child and to the life which she had escaped by running into the woods and kissing the prince. She didn't just kiss the prince by chance. She stalked him. She had her eyes on him from the beginning. She sees him once and then they talk, but only for a second because things are too chaotic. Finally, she has her moment, but she only has her moment because Cinderella decides she doesn't want to be with the prince. In the most wonderful bit of stage business, they swap shoes. Cinderella becomes a kind of baker's wife, becomes a peasant, and the baker's wife becomes a kind of Cinderella.

She doesn't put on the shoes, but there's a sort of metaphorical swapping of the shoes so that she becomes the character in the fairy tale of Cinderella and Prince Charming. Therefore, she gets her chance to kiss the prince. As Lapine and Sondheim wrote it, she doesn't follow through on the Cinderella template, but then neither does the other Cinderella, which makes the show so interesting. We have these fairy tale paradigms or expected narratives to fairy tales that are cut short or turned around or reversed or something. I thought, well, what's going on here? The baker's wife has spent all this time trying to track down Prince Charming. She has really plotted this. She takes advantage of the situation by essentially swapping roles with Cinderella, who then becomes a kind of surrogate baker's wife to the baker.

The baker's wife becomes a kind of Cinderella and now finds her Prince Charming. They have their dalliance, whether it's a kiss or more. Something happens, which is the culmination of the fairy tale motif. He runs off. As princes do, his work is done. He has, in a sense, transported her into a new realm of consciousness or awareness, which is what happens in every fairy tale of every sort. The character crosses into a threshold and learns something, which of course Little Red Riding Hood talks about. I know things now that I never knew before. Everyone knows that lyric, but that's the point of the fairy tale. She has crossed the threshold with Prince Charming. She knows things now that she never knew before.

Prince Charming leaves, and she's left alone, and everything hangs in the balance. Then what is she going to do? What she does is she ends the fairy tale, back to life, back to sense, back to shouldn'ts and shoulds. She goes back to the baker and their child. She toys in the song with trying to have it both ways and have a baker for bread and a prince for whatever, and that doesn't really work out. You can't live that way. You cannot be in the woods and out of the woods. It's one or the other. She decides it's time to leave the woods.

[39:05] ♪ Musical number ♪

[39:28] Richard Schoch: And so she goes back. Now, of course, spoiler, she dies almost immediately, so she never really does get back, though she reappears at the ghost at the end. And I thought, I don't know. I don't know about this. I can't wrap my head around it. If the show is suggesting that she made the right decision to go back, well, then why does she die? And then why does the show give us so much time with her plotting her moment with Prince Charming? Why does she want to be with Prince Charming in the first place? Because remember, the baker and the baker's wife were deliberately written as stand-ins, surrogates, proxies for the audience. The fairy tale characters who don't come from a fairy tale, because they're us. They're a contemporary couple from the Bronx thrust into this story, basically.

[40:16] David Armstrong: Exactly. That's what they said. And why exactly the Bronx? I'm not sure. But he said they're a bickering couple from the Bronx. But that is right. You know, flashing red light, whatever happens to the baker and whatever happens to the baker's wife is a projection or an image of our life. So I wasn't really convinced that dramatically, this was making sense to me. So then I started to read some interviews. It was American Theatre Magazine. And it was an interview with, I think, three or four actresses who had played the baker's wife on Broadway, beginning with Joanna Gleeson, who created the role. And the consensus was that Moments in the Woods was a song in which the character, in a sense, recommits herself to the vows that she has made. That she had to have this dalliance, this little fleeing. She had to stray a little bit in order to realize, no, that's not what I want.

[41:09] Richard Schoch: In order to appreciate what she had.

[41:15] David Armstrong: Thank you. Exactly. That was it. And the actresses were very consistent. That was their view of the character and the song. And she goes back home, attempts to go back home, appreciating all the more what she had at the start. Which is, of course, a, you know, journey and return motif. That's a classic, dramatic arc. And I was of two minds on this. And I understood that, dramatically, that is a perfectly plausible character narrative. And also aligns with the sense of community and solidarity and mutual care and responsibility that is so important in Act Two. But at the same time, I thought, but, you know, I still don't know. I'm still not sure, dramatically, if that works for me. Because, again, why has so much time been given to her pursuit of Prince Charming?

She takes so many risks. For her to disobey the baker in the patriarchal order of the world of the play. You know, that's Eve in the Garden of Eden with the apple. It's her first transgression. And she just commits one transgression after another. And I thought, she's taken so many risks. She's put herself in so much peril. And if I may say, the show seems to be celebrating her for doing this. For being transgressive. We're on her side. Yes, we want something to happen. We actually delight in her romp with the prince. We've kind of been waiting for it. Why? Because that's what we want for ourselves. We want to have that larger than ordinary life moment where we realize there's something bigger, something ultimate going on.

And maybe the life that we are, as she feels, trapped in, stuck in, confined by, maybe that isn't the whole story. Maybe there's a way out. Maybe there's a larger life. Maybe I can get out of the trap. Maybe I can get unstuck. And how do you get out of the trap and unstuck? You find a prince and you kiss him. And then hurrah! Suddenly, a whole new world has opened up to you. That is the classic fairy tale paradigm.

[43:26] Richard Schoch: Why would Sondheim and Lapine put the baker's wife, which is to say us, in the classic fairy tale paradigm of getting unstuck in life and moving into a larger life, a larger consciousness, a larger awareness, only for her to reject it and go back and then die? And that's when I thought, well, you know, let me try to investigate this song, "Moments in the Woods," from the other side. Because back to a point I made earlier, I think that one of the merits of Sondheim's work, again, is that opposites can be held at the same time. Opposites don't have to be resolved. They can be opposite. A song can mean two different things at the same time. And that is an asset in a work of art. It's complexity.

It doesn't diminish a work of art. It enhances it by holding multitudes, as Walt Whitman might have said. So it's okay, on the one hand, we have the conventional reading of "Moments in the Woods," which is that she appreciates that life as she had it was pretty good. She decides she wants to continue with that. She goes back and there's a kind of moral doubling down, if you will, in that version, which is how it's conventionally played. I thought, well, just as devil's advocate, let me try and investigate "Moments in the Woods" as a tragedy, as a tragic song. Let me see what would happen if I took seriously the idea that she was wrong to go back, that it was a tragedy, that it was a mistake, that she should have, metaphorically speaking, stayed with the prince, stayed in the woods.

She opened the door to a larger life, and she should have walked through the door instead of closing the door. What would happen to my encounter with the show if I felt that this character made a bad decision, not a good decision? In fact, she made the worst possible decision that she could. Well, one of the things that happened was that her death made sense, because in the conventional reading of the song, why does she die? It doesn't make sense that she dies. The audience loves her. We want her to be reunited with her family, and then the show pulls out the rug from under us and kills our favorite character, or at least one of our favorite characters, which is a really mean thing to do. But if we think, oh, Baker's wife, what have you done?

How could you not stay with the prince? He kissed you. All doors are opening for you. How can you retreat from the very thing that you have so desperately sought, the very thing that you have broken all the rules to find, and now you've found it and you throw it away? How can you do that? That is a tragedy, and then that is why she dies. We're talking about Sweeney. Tragic heroes and heroines must die, and that which must happen happens quickly, because she doesn't get very far on counting her steps back home. She gets killed. She gets stomped on by a giant. For me, "Into the Woods" was a wonderful opportunity where I felt aligned with the show, and where I felt either the show resisted me or I was resisting the show, but I felt a misalignment.

I don't mean that in a negative or critical way. I mean it in an admiring way, which is this show, in particular, "Into the Woods," provoked two completely different responses in me. But I also feel I don't really want to decide between them. I want to be able to have both responses, because a classic work of art should allow that.

[47:01] David Armstrong: Yeah, I found this whole idea to be really fascinating, because I do think the baker's wife, I've always found her to be somewhat inexplicable in the resolution of her story or the lack of resolution of the story, and partly because I saw that original production a couple of times, and of course on the video, I've seen it many, many times. And Joanna Gleeson, her performance was so transcendent, and she was the star of the show at that time, in a way that in later productions I've seen the baker's wife not nearly have the centeredness that she gave it. But she always felt like the leading character in the show to me, the central female character. And then to have her go on this journey and then be killed really felt like the rug being pulled out from under you.

Some people have suggested, and a lot of people at the time suggested, well, it's because she committed adultery that she is then punished, which just didn't seem like something Sondheim would be espousing or putting forward or Lapine either one. So that never felt right to me, that that was the reason she had to die. So I found your thesis here really interesting as a way to try to justify why this happens. I question though, then, if she did make the choice of staying with the prince, we also know that she'd end up with somebody who was charming and not sincere, as he says himself. I don't know that that would be a positive outcome either. And you know, and of course, the whole show is about what path are you going to take, that's your subtitle, which road, the road she didn't take is clear, but then the result of the road she does take is very puzzling.

So I appreciate this effort to try to figure that out. I think it may be a flaw in the show in that it doesn't quite satisfy the audience who's been led to fall in love with this character and empathize with them and be our way into the story. And then we felt like, well, what'd you do to us? That was me. You just killed me. You killed me off and I don't know why.

[49:01] Richard Schoch: Yeah, I think that's right. We do feel a bit resentful that this character we adore and fall in love with, falling in love with ourselves, is taken away from us in the most gruesome manner.

[49:16] David Armstrong: And arbitrary.

[49:17] Richard Schoch: Arbitrary manner. And yeah, and all attempts to justify it, to use a fancy word, dramaturgically by the logic of character or logic of circumstance, they don't, they don't work. So why? Who knows? But I approach this chapter as a thought experiment, which not as, oh, there's a hidden meaning to "Moments in the Woods," which you, dear reader, have never understood. You probably didn't notice this before, and here it is. No, you're not saying that. I will tell you that's not my approach. My approach has been, let's just do a thought experiment. Let's just imagine that she made the wrong choice. What would that mean? And how would the song set up the wrong choice? And then how would we feel about the character and her death?

So it was in no way saying, this is the authoritative interpretation of "Moments in the Woods." It was not. It was like, this is a really complex song. It's a puzzling character. It's dramatically unsatisfying. Let's just look at it from another angle. It's like someone in a tree in "Pacific Overtures." Let's just take a different perspective on it and see, see if that sheds any light on what's going on. But what's been interesting is that I hear from readers all the time, which I love. I am always flattered and delighted, not just that someone read the book, but they read it carefully and would take the time to get in touch with me and share their thoughts on the book for an author. That is certainly for me, it's very gratifying, as you yourself know.

But more than one reader has said, man, I just did not agree with you about "Moments in the Woods." I think somebody called it misguided, something like that, which is okay, because everybody's going to have their... As I say, I'm not trying to be authoritative. I'm not trying to have the last word. I'm bringing something to the table. Whether it's of interest to you or not is for you to decide, but this is what I want to share with you. So those kind of comments, they don't distress me as an author. In fact, I am pleased that a reader has felt comfortable enough to say, you know, I like most of the book, but you lost me on this one. I can't go with you on that. That's wonderful. In a perverse way, I really like hearing what readers found challenging or contentious in the book.

But I felt at liberty, just to kind of tie this up, I felt at liberty to take this thought experiment approach because I kept remembering that fairy tales are not real. Yes, the baker's wife is a stand-in for us, but Prince Charming is not a real person. There is no historical event of the prince kissing the baker's wife or the prince being at the ball with Cinderella. These are symbols, these are archetypes, and these are metaphors. So I tried to free myself from being overly literal about the action, about the scene, and about the characters. I said, if I just kind of loosen this up a bit, maybe I can approach the song in a different way. We were talking about what might be a kind of built-in flaw of the show.

I think a built-in flaw of "Into the Woods," and there's no way around it, a built-in flaw of "Into the Woods" is that a staged fairy tale is going to feel literal, is going to feel actual. But I can see Joanna Gleeson as the baker's wife. I can see Robert Westenberg as the prince. It's going to feel literal, not figurative. It's going to feel realistic, not magical, even with all the scenery and costumes and songs. So for me, that's a kind of design flaw in "Into the Woods," but there is no "Into the Woods" without it. That's how it goes.

[53:03] David Armstrong: I'd also suggest that the authors, I think, ultimately are more interested in the baker than the baker's wife, which is not how I feel about the show, and probably not for you either. But they have manipulated the plot in order to put the baker in a situation where he now has to end up with Cinderella and confront all the issues of forming this community and protecting the world and all the things that the baker has to do. So I think they made this choice, probably, to turn the focus to the baker.

[53:34] Richard Schoch: Yes, you expressed that very well. Thank you. I'm glad to hear that. And it rings true, because if there was a scene of the baker's wife returning home, we'd have to deal with that. Then there'd be a standoff between Cinderella and the baker's wife, and it would become an entirely different show. So one way or another, the answer to the question, why did the baker's wife die? The answer is because she had to.

[54:01] David Armstrong: Exactly. In order to tell the rest of the story.

[54:05] Richard Schoch: Correct.

[54:11] David Armstrong: And that's where we'll pick up the conversation on the next episode of Broadway Nation, when Richard Schoch returns to talk about "Passion," "Assassins," and more.

[54:14] Richard Schoch: Are you working on something new?

[54:17] David Armstrong: No.

[54:20] Richard Schoch: That is not like you, George.

[54:23] David Armstrong: I've nothing to say.

[54:26] Richard Schoch: You have many things.

[54:28] David Armstrong: Well, nothing that's not been said.

[54:33] Richard Schoch: I do not know where to go. I want to make things that count.

[54:56] ♪ Musical number: "Moving On" — performed by the cast of "Into the Woods" ♪

[55:11] David Armstrong: If you love this podcast and want to delve even deeper into the world of Broadway musicals, I invite you to become a patron of Broadway Nation. For as little as $7 a month, you can receive exclusive access to never-before-heard, unedited versions of many of the interviews featured on this podcast. I often record twice as much conversation as ends up in the edited public episodes. And you also have the exclusive opportunity to hear additional in-depth conversations with my frequent co-host, Albert Evans. And all patrons will receive special on-air shout-outs and acknowledgments of your vital support. To join, simply go to broadwaynationpodcast.supercast.tech. That's all one word, broadwaynationpodcast.supercast.tech. Or simply click the link in the show notes to this episode.

[56:06] David Armstrong: Broadway Nation is written and produced by me, David Armstrong. Special thanks to Pals Mox for his help with editing this episode, and to the entire team at the Broadway Podcast Network.

[56:45] ♪ Musical number: "Moving On" — performed by the cast of "Into the Woods" ♪