Hollywood Heads Into The Woods

While musical theatre buffs have been grabbing their popcorn and choc tops, ready to spend some time at the movies, Ian Nisbet asks whether these new movie adaptations of Broadway favourites do justice to the original works.

“They’re going to ruin it.”

“It doesn’t need to be made in to a movie.”

“I heard they’ve cut the best song in the show.”

There’s been a bit of hubbub recently amongst aficionados about the current slew  movie musicals: Annie and Into the Woods are already in cinemas; The Last Five Years has, ironically, set its US release for Valentine’s Day; and Lucky Stiff is awaiting distribution, with many others in the pipeline, including American Idiot and 13.

Fan trepidation was only fuelled by the recent preview release of the Annie soundtrack. Over-produced, with many changes to both tempi and orchestration, it feels closer to a rock musical than a traditional stage show. Were Annie’s writers (Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin and Thomas Meehan) aware of the changes being made to their show? Possibly, but the adaptation appears to be vastly removed from the classic original.

There’s a lot to gain from some film adaptations though, particularly when the authors retain control. This is the case with Into the Woods, with Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine appearing to have taken a hands-on approach to its development. Changes from the stage production were approved by the writers, with “Ever After”,the finale of Act I, adapted into an instrumental piece, possibly because a film doesn’t require the same closure as a live show prior to interval.

Two new songs were written for the film but subsequently cut – one for Meryl Streep (The Witch), and ‘Rainbows’ for James Corden (The Baker) and his wife (Emily Blunt). One possible explanation for these new songs, other than the need to patch/improve flow in the slightly edited book, is the chance for Sondheim to win himself a second Oscar. According to cast interviews, the songs added little to the adaptation, and it’s pleasing to hear that they were cut, rather than kept in for the sake of a new tune (there are rumours that Streep’s song will be added as a bonus on the CD/DVD/Blu-ray release – keep an eye out).

On the cutting of ‘Rainbows’, Corden told Playbill:  "We rehearsed it, and it just didn't quite feel right. We rehearsed it a lot. The beauty of doing a film like this is that you have actual rehearsal time, and it just didn't quite feel [right in the show]… It's a beautiful song. I love the song. I think it's gorgeous. It's really, really nice, but it just didn't quite fit. It sort of disrupted the flow of the story, actually."

And this is where my point comes in. These people are not just slapping together an effects-filled extravaganza so far removed from the original that it’s hard to even recognise - they’re taking their time to work their art in a considered and level-headed way in order to treat the work with the respect it deserves. Cutting ‘Rainbows’ also takes Sondheim out of the Oscars race, and we can consider that a good sign that the creators were keeping their egos in check during development.

Sondheim felt personally compelled to respond to the multitude of rumours floating around: “The fact is that James (Lapine, who wrote both the show and the movie) and I worked out every change from stage to screen with the producers and with Rob Marshall, the director. Despite what [some articles] may convey, the collaboration was genuinely collaborative and always productive. Having now seen [the film] a couple of times, I can happily report that it is not only a faithful adaptation of the show, it is a first-rate movie.”

Jason Robert Brown has also jumped on the Hollywood bandwagon, with the semi-autobiographical The Last Five Years coming out on Valentine’s Day 2015 (which is ironic considering the show is based around a failed marriage/relationship). While the screenplay has been adapted by Richard LaGravenese (The Fisher King), Brown has been heavily involved throughout production, only handing over to his “on-set music supervisor”/wife and fellow songwriter, Georgia Stitt, during final rehearsals for his recent Broadway musical The Bridges of Madison County. Brown’s 13, concerning a “guy named Evan” and his impending bar mitzvah,is also headed for the big screen, although a release date is yet to be announced.

Into the Woods is in similar care, musically, with the 53-piece orchestra helmed by Sondheim veteran (and the show’s original MD) Paul Gemignani. If that sounds like a massive orchestra, it is – the closest I could find quickly was 39 in the original 1945 production of Carousel. Streep recently revealed to Playbill that Sondheim himself has "never heard this score played by this size orchestra. That's really wonderful, and he oversaw all of the [music] — from the beginning to the end — so whatever you think of it, this is Sondheim's sound."­ And what a sound it is. Do yourself a favour and check out the audio-only recording of Anna Kendrick’s ‘On the Steps of the Palace’online– the orchestra is nothing short of glorious and that’s before I even start on Kendrick.

But the adaptation process itself can be tricky. Movie musicals can easily fail if they stay too close to the original stage version; they need to be realised as a unique piece of cinema in their own right. This has been attempted to varying degrees of success in the past. Chicago managed to successfully traverse the gap between speech and song by setting many of the musical numbers in a virtual ‘black box’, allowing the songs to comment on the action continuing beneath them. RENT was not so successful, setting the anti-naturalistic numbers in too realistic locations, making the singing clash with standard cinematic conventions.

The more recent Les Misérables was a visual extravaganza that fell on its own sword due to the live, on-set singing. Whilst some performances (Anne Hathaway) were spell-binding, others (Russell Crowe) left much to be desired. Sondheim fans can sleep easy, however, knowing that approximately 94% of the film’s singing was done in a studio, with only the remaining fraction sung live on set.

Yes, film adaptations can add value to a work – either through budget or timeline advantages – but they can never recreate the magic of live theatre performance. Their magic is no less valid, just different.

Streep got it right in a recent Playbill interview: "That's the joy of the theatre — you'll see many, many different productions of things. A great piece sort of expands to the sensibility of the people that come together to make it, and it's never going to be the same. Into the Woods will have many other productions of it. It's like a great opera. There are always the people who sit on the first one they saw and think that's the definitive one, but it's a living, breathing organism, and that's what's so cool about it. A lot of movies you can't remake, but things that have a life that came from the theatre can morph and change and live and breathe in different configurations of people. That's what's exciting.”

That’s all that (some of these movies) are – new iterations of a beloved show. They are not definitive, nor will the show never be produced live again. And the fact that they are in the highly capable hands of their own creators is a point to be celebrated; that’s what’s exciting.

This article was originally published in the January / February 2015 edition of Stage Whispers.