Woods Sondheim

Fractured fairy tales of a darker hue provide the remarkablecontext for Into the Woods, which deconstructs the Brothers Grimm by way of Rod Serling. While the faces and names are familiar, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and company inhabit a sylvan neighborhood in which witches and bakers are next-door neighbors, handsome princes from once-parallel fables are competitive (and equally vain) brothers, and all the stories intersect through unexpected new plot twists. Stephen Sondheim's Tony-winning score favors intricate ensemble numbers that present the characters' divergent, then overlapping fears and desires. And it's the latter category that provides a primary thread to James Lapine's ingenious puzzle of a book, which coheres around the inevitability--and treachery--of our innermost wishes. That theme is given farcical energy in the first act, which offers enough comic invention, tart dialogue, and witty music for a satisfying evening of theater as is. Instead, Sondheim and Lapine offer a bold, darker second act that takes a look at what happens after "happily ever after," elevating the work beyond inspired parody toward allegorical gravity. By the final scenes, with the one-two punch of the score's two most enduring songs, "No One Is Alone" and "Children Will Listen," what began as a clever diversion has touched deeper nerves and primed some tear ducts. This video production by the original Broadway cast gets its marquee shimmer from Bernadette Peters's wonderful witch, but the standout (and Tony winner as Best Actress) is Joanna Gleason, who gives the Baker's Wife a mixture of warmth, pragmatism, and sudden, poignantly romantic radiance. The DVD version is comparatively no-frills, given its American Playhouse origins, but multiformat digital audio renders the musical performances in immaculate detail. --Sam Sutherland

A baker and his wife journey into the woods in search of a cow, a red cape, a pair of golden slippers and some magic beans to lift a curse that has kept them childless. Tony Award winners Bernadette Peters, Joanna Gleason and the rest of the original Broadway cast weave their magic spell over you in Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece, directed by James Lapine, a seamless fusion of fairy tale characters and what happens after "happily ever after. "With oft-recorded songs such as "Children Will Listen" and "No One is Alone," "Into the Woods" is a music lover's delight from start to finish--and will forever cement Stephen Sondheim's unparalleled position as the giant of the American musical theater.

The winner of 10 Academy Awards, this 1961 musical by choreographer Jerome Robbins and director Robert Wise (The Sound of Music) remains irresistible. Based on a smash Broadway play updating Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to the 1950s era of juvenile delinquency, the film stars Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer as the star-crossed lovers from different neighborhoods--and ethnicities. The film's real selling points, however, are the highly charged and inventive song-and-dance numbers, the passionate ballads, the moody sets, colorful support from Rita Moreno, and the sheer accomplishment of Hollywood talent and technology producing a film so stirring. Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim wrote the score. --Tom Keogh

This brilliant (The New Republic) film sets the ageless story of Romeo and Juliet against a backdrop of gang warfare in 1950s New York. Directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins and scripted by Ernest Lehman, the film combines Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's unforgettable score ( Maria, America, 'somewhere, 'tonight ) with Robbins own exuberant choreography to achieve an exhilarating work of art (Saturday Review). A love affair is fated for tragedy amidst the vicious rivalry of two street gangsthe Jets and the Sharks. When Jets member Tony (RichardBeymer) falls for Maria (Natalie Wood), the sister of the Sharks leader, it's more than these two warring gangs can handle. And as mounting tensions rise, a battle to the death ensues, and innocent blood is shed in a heartbreaking finale.

The winner of 10 Academy Awards, this 1961 musical by choreographer Jerome Robbins and director Robert Wise (The Sound of Music) remains irresistible. Based on a smash Broadway play updating Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to the 1950s era of juvenile delinquency, the film stars Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer as the star-crossed lovers from different neighborhoods--and ethnicities. The film's real selling points, however, are the highly charged and inventive song-and-dance numbers, the passionate ballads, the moody sets, colorful support from Rita Moreno, and the sheer accomplishment of Hollywood talent and technology producing a film so stirring. Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim wrote the score. --Tom Keogh

This brilliant (The New Republic) film sets the ageless story of Romeo and Juliet against a backdrop of gang warfare in 1950s New York. Directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins and scripted by Ernest Lehman, the film combines Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's unforgettable score ( Maria, America, 'somewhere, 'tonight ) with Robbins own exuberant choreography to achieve an exhilarating work of art (Saturday Review). A love affair is fated for tragedy amidst the vicious rivalry of two street gangsthe Jets and the Sharks. When Jets member Tony (RichardBeymer) falls for Maria (Natalie Wood), the sister of the Sharks leader, it's more than these two warring gangs can handle. And as mounting tensions rise, a battle to the death ensues, and innocent blood is shed in a heartbreaking finale.

As conceived by Stephen Sondheim and cocreator James Lapine (following their Pulitzer Prize-winning Sunday in the Park with George), Into the Woods tells the intricate tale of multiple fairy-tale characters crossing paths in the woods, not merely resolving the characters' dilemmas but also exploring what happens after happily ever after. Sondheim's chamber-scale music, recipient of the 1987 Tony for Best Score, is one of his most beautiful and accessible, and is at its most poignant in "No More," "No One Is Alone," and "Children Will Listen." The original Broadway cast is outstanding top to bottom, most notably Bernadette Peters as a rapping witch and Joanna Gleason, who won a Tony for Best Actress. The CD booklet includes production photos and--so important for a Sondheim show--full lyrics. Fortunately, this cast was also captured on video and DVD. --David Horiuchi

A Classic Stephen Sondheim Musical Available Now at a New Low Price! Featuresbonus tracks, digitally remastered and new liner notes.

Stephen Sondheim's Victorian horror thriller Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is generally considered his greatest work, macabre but darkly humorous with a viscerally powerful score that has found a home both on Broadway and in opera houses. George Hearn (who replaced Len Cariou of the original Broadway cast) plays the title character, a wronged man whose lust for revenge drives him to murder (an 18th-century legend who has been traced to a real-life barber), and Angela Lansbury plays his partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett, who finds a practical business use for Todd's victims. This combination of horror and humor is echoed in Sondheim's score: brooding menace ("The Ballad of Sweeney Todd," "My Friend"), achingly beautiful ballads ("Johanna," "Not While I'm Around"), clever puns ("A Little Priest"), coloratura arias ("Green Finch and Linnet Bird"), and intricate choral and ensemble numbers. Continuing a fortuitous tradition of capturing the Sondheim legacy on video recordings, this performance was filmed before a live audience in Los Angeles during the 1982 national tour. Almost 20 years later, Hearn returned to the role opposite Patti LuPone in an acclaimed concert production. But Sweeney Todd is an especially compelling experience in this 1982 version, complete with the clever staging tricks (e.g., the barber's chair) and as close to the original cast as we're likely to see. --David Horiuchi

Studio: Turner Hm Entertainm Release Date: 04/20/2004 Run time: 140 minutes Rating: Nr

Fractured fairy tales of a darker hue provide the remarkablecontext for Into the Woods, which deconstructs the Brothers Grimm by way of Rod Serling. While the faces and names are familiar, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and company inhabit a sylvan neighborhood in which witches and bakers are next-door neighbors, handsome princes from once-parallel fables are competitive (and equally vain) brothers, and all the stories intersect through unexpected new plot twists. Stephen Sondheim's Tony-winning score favors intricate ensemble numbers that present the characters' divergent, then overlapping fears and desires. And it's the latter category that provides a primary thread to James Lapine's ingenious puzzle of a book, which coheres around the inevitability--and treachery--of our innermost wishes. That theme is given farcical energy in the first act, which offers enough comic invention, tart dialogue, and witty music for a satisfying evening of theater as is. Instead, Sondheim and Lapine offer a bold, darker second act that takes a look at what happens after "happily ever after," elevating the work beyond inspired parody toward allegorical gravity. By the final scenes, with the one-two punch of the score's two most enduring songs, "No One Is Alone" and "Children Will Listen," what began as a clever diversion has touched deeper nerves and primed some tear ducts. This video production by the original Broadway cast gets its marquee shimmer from Bernadette Peters's wonderful witch, but the standout (and Tony winner as Best Actress) is Joanna Gleason, who gives the Baker's Wife a mixture of warmth, pragmatism, and sudden, poignantly romantic radiance. The DVD version is comparatively no-frills, given its American Playhouse origins, but multiformat digital audio renders the musical performances in immaculate detail. --Sam Sutherland

A fusion of fairytales in musical form, covering themes from Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and others.

The six-disc Stephen Sondheim DVD Collection is pure Broadway gold, encompassing three original Broadway cast performances and three all-star concerts celebrating the work of musical theater's most important composer over the last half of the 20th century. Into the Woods is Sondheim's most popular show, an amalgam of fractured fairy tales and what happens after "happily ever after." Bernadette Peters heads the cast, joined by Tony winner Joanna Gleason and Chip Zein. Sunday in the Park with George was Sondheim's immediately preceding work, also a collaboration with writer-director James Lapine and also starring Bernadette Peters. She plays Dot, the mistress of brilliant French pointillist painter Georges Seurat (Mandy Patinkin), in a powerful work about the nature of art and the artist that gains substantially when you can see the staging elements. The third Broadway cast performance is Passion, which was shot on stage though not before a live audience. It's a story of obsessive love in which the romance between Giorgio (Jere Shea) and Clara (Marin Mazzie) is disrupted by a strange woman named Signora Fosca (Tony winner Donna Murphy). Sweeney Todd is generally considered Sondheim's best work, and it's well performed in a concert setting by Patti LuPone and George Hearn (reprising his role as the demonic barber almost 20 years after he played it opposite Angela Lansbury in a 1982 video recording). Follies in Concert was an attempt to right a wrong created by a truncated original cast recording, so it's ironic that roughly half the program is backstage material combined with only 47 minutes of concert footage. There are some brilliant moments, though, from such performers as Barbara Cook, Hearn, Patinkin, and Lee Remick. A Celebration at Carnegie Hall is another all-star cast performance of both Broadway stars and operatic voices peppered with comedy from Bill Irwin. Highlights include the ensemble numbers, Daisy Egan's "Broadway Baby," and Patrick Cassidy and Victor Garber's "The Ballad of Booth," which is about as close as you'll get to an original cast performance of Assassins. All in all, this invaluable set preserves and celebrates an important body of work that may never again be documented this well. --David Horiuchi

No Description Available.Genre: MusicalsRating: NRRelease Date: 23-SEP-2003Media Type: DVD

The Tony Award-winning musical, now adapted into a lavishly illustrated book Into the Woods is the imaginative account of what happens when the lives of new and old fairy-tale characters dramatically and humorously come together. Cinderella, Jack (of bean-stalk fame), Little Red Ridinghood, and the Baker and his Wife set out for the forest on a quest to find "happily ever after." Along the way they meet Rapunzel, a Wicked Witch, a lascivious Wolf, vengeful Giants, a couple of charming Princes, and their own destiny. With wit and wisdom, the authors have given us a parable about the loss of innocence, the joys and sorrows of adulthood, and the price paid for getting the things you really want.

Stephen Sondheim's Tony-Award winning musical includes: Agony It Takes Two Stay with Me Any Moment No More No One Is Alone.

Titles include: Opening (Part I, II, IIA, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII) Cinderella at the Grave Hello Little Girl Hello Little Girl (Underscore) I Guess This Is Goodbye Maybe They're Magic Rapunzel Baker's Reprise Cinderella Coming from the Ball (Underscore) A Very Nice Prince First Midnight Giants in the Sky Underscore 9A Agony Agony Playoff (Underscore) and more.