We know the reports of plot changes made to Into The Woods were greatly exaggerated, but the movie still won’t be exactly the same as the show. You know what won’t be there, though? That song they were going to add. Oh good, because we refuse to geekily memorize any more lyrics in this show. The songs you’ve already got are difficult enough, Sondheim!
A bit of background information: when musicals are made into movies, oftentimes they’ll seek out the creators of the musical to create a new song specifically for the theatrical version. This isn’t a new phenomenon (“I Have Confidence” was not in the original The Sound of Music book, if you can believe it) but these days most people assume that it’s done so the movie has a shot at winning Best Song at the Academy Awards. So when it was announced that Into The Woods would have an added song by Stephen Sondheim for Meryl Streep to sing as the witch, it wasn’t that out of the blue. Couldn’t be worse than the song they added into Les Miserables, right? It’s Sondheim!
But despite how Sondheimy it might have been, apparently it just didn’t work the right way. As director Rob Mashall explained to Entertainment Weekly, “It was beautiful and spectacular, but it was very clear, as good as the song was, that [the film] was stronger without.”
For those of us who live and breathe Bernadette Peter’s original performance as the witch and, while enamored with Streep, are worried about her overall vocal quality, Marshall assures us that everything’s going to be fine. “I don’t think people will be remotely ready to hear her sing this material,” he said in the same interview. “The power from her is off the charts.”
Okay, Marshall, but how’s she going to handle her entrance in the prologue? ‘Cuz lemme tell you, everybody thinks that rapping about rampion is going to be a walk in the park, and then you try it out at the first table read and it’s all an awkward watercress mess and you feel like an idiot for the rest of the production. Not that I’ve ever experienced that. Ahem.
(via /Film)
- First Trailer for Into the Woods Has Lots of Actors, No Actual Singing
- New Stills from Disney’s Into the Woods
- Stephen Sondheim Goes Into Damage Control Mode Following Tales of Disneyfied Into the Woods
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