I’ve been thinking about Stephen Sondheim passing away

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The promise of Into the Woods was that it wove the story of Grimm’s fairytales. My brothers and I always ended up loving the musicals that our parents took us to, but frequently the sell our parents had to do sounded, frankly, boring. Tell a 10-year-old that instead of seeing CATS, promoted religiously on local New York City television, you were going to see a musical about the unfinished manuscript of Charles Dickens’ last novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and you weren’t going to receive the same enthusiasm out of us little ones. But Into the Woods was something we could understand, and the stories were ones we all liked.

NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 21:  Actress Bernadette Peters and composer Stephen Sondheim attend the Great Writers Thank Their Lucky Stars annual gala hosted by The Dramatists Guild Fund on October 21, 2013 in New York City.  (Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for Dramatists Guild Fund)

The musical, if you do not already know it, works in two parts: The first is weaving together some of the famed Grimm fairytales of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, the baker and his wife, Jack and the Giant Beanstalk, Cinderella and a witch. It is very clever and moving and funny and makes fun of the fairytales in a way I could understand at the time. The second half of the play is “ever after.” It is the dark and unintended consequences of everyone receiving their wishes from the stories we all grew up hearing and reading.

Towards the end of the first act, Rapunzel’s witch mother (the witch for all of the stories is the same, and was played when I saw it by Bernadette Peters) discovers that a prince has been secretly visiting Rapunzel high in her tower. We all knew the story of Rapunzel and her magically long hair, and as a child the only interest we had was Rapunzel freeing herself and (depending on whether or not your parents read you the unadulterated Grimm fairytale with the blinding and wandering) finding love with her prince. But Sondheim used this story to talk about something more, and he did so by asking a singular question: Why? Why does the witch keep Rapunzel high up in a tower?

Before Rapunzel rejects her witch mother only to have her hair cut off, the witch sings a song called “Stay With Me.” I remember being so deeply moved in a way I had not ever been moved before. Perhaps it was that first taste of the sadness that life and change bring finding purchase in my developing mind. I didn’t realize it at the time, as I was standing on the precipice of becoming a teenager, soon to be fighting with my mother and father all the time in an attempt at carving out my identity, but all of the empathy I felt for Peters in that moment would elude me for the next decade. The power of Peters’ refrain:

28th August 1962:  American songwriter Stephen Sondheim, whose works include the musicals 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum', 'Into the Woods' and 'Passion'.  (Photo by Michael Hardy/Express/Getty Images)

Stay at home
I am home
Who out there could love you more than I?
What out there that I cannot supply?
Stay with me
Stay with me
The world is dark and wild
Stay a child while you can be a child
With me

I am now a parent of two children, both of whom are growing up far too quickly for my personal liking, and while I hope to never hold on to something so tightly that I lose it, I can’t help but feel that in those lines and music and Peters’ performance remains an encapsulation of all our lives’ sublimely painful, exhilarating, frightening, beautiful, and ultimately ephemeral experience together.



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