This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] BEN RIMALOWER: Broadway Podcast Network presents Giants in the Sky: How Sondheim and LePine Went Into the Woods with me, BEN RIMALOWER.

[0:09] BEN RIMALOWER: Today's guest, James Lapine.

[0:11] BEN RIMALOWER: Once Upon a Time.

[0:22] BEN RIMALOWER: Once upon a time, Steven Sondheim and James Lapine created a musical that ran for two years on Broadway, two years on tour, was broadcast on TV, and became a staple for stock and amateur groups.

[0:35] BEN RIMALOWER: I directed it in college, and so did you.

[0:38] BEN RIMALOWER: Or maybe you played Little Red or The Clarinet or worked crew.

[0:42] BEN RIMALOWER: My cousin Joshua played Cinderella's father at Irvine High.

[0:46] BEN RIMALOWER: And now, almost 40 years later, there's been a blockbuster film from Walt Disney and several major New York revivals, including last season's City Center production, now on tour and nominated for six Tonys.

[1:00] BEN RIMALOWER: Maybe because of the accessibility of its familiar fairy tale characters in milieu, or maybe because of the enduring legacy of the iconic original cast widely available on home video.

[1:11] BEN RIMALOWER: Or maybe because composer lyricist Steven Sondheim and bookwriter-director James Lapine were master musical theater artists at the peak of their powers.

[1:21] BEN RIMALOWER: Into the Woods, and especially its landmark original production, has occupied an increasingly important place in the pantheon of Broadway musicals.

[1:31] BEN RIMALOWER: For many of us, the show has served as a sort of entrée to Sondheim, to musicals, and to theater in general.

[1:38] BEN RIMALOWER: A gateway drug, if you will, for millions of budding theater artists and fans.

[1:44] BEN RIMALOWER: But for a piece so cherished by millennials and zoomers and the occasional age-defying Gen Xer, the origins of Into the Woods, written pre-internet, remain somewhat shrouded in mystery.

[1:58] BEN RIMALOWER: Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine did numerous interviews about the work over the years, often expounding in depth on their research into the psychological significance of fairy tales in human history and the rich musical tapestry of Sondheim's score.

[2:13] BEN RIMALOWER: Yet there's precious little information out there about the nuts and bolts of how the show came together.

[2:20] BEN RIMALOWER: I guess you could say we've been missing the trees for the forest.

[2:24] BEN RIMALOWER: Like its predecessor, the first Sondheim-Lapine collaboration, 1984's Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods began life in readings and a workshop at Playwrights Horizons.

[2:35] BEN RIMALOWER: Sunday in the Park's Playwrights Horizons workshop led to a full production there, followed by a run on Broadway.

[2:40] BEN RIMALOWER: But Into the Woods was in development for a few years, with the Playwrights Horizons presentations followed by a world premiere at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego, and then more workshopping back in New York City as its commercial producers prepared to present it on Broadway in the fall of 1987.

[2:57] BEN RIMALOWER: Over the years, I've heard various tidbits about these pre-Broadway iterations of Into the Woods, like that there were other fairy tale characters incorporated into the story, such as Rumpelstiltskin and the Three Little Pigs, or that Tony Award winner Betty Buckley played The Witch.

[3:14] BEN RIMALOWER: But there's nearly zero mention anywhere online of Betty Buckley's association with Into the Woods beyond a scratchy snippet, audio only, on Aurora Spiderwoman's YouTube channel.

[3:25] BEN RIMALOWER: The pre-Broadway production of Into the Woods at the Old Globe, with Ellen Foley as the witch, was covered in the press, so it's Googleable.

[3:33] BEN RIMALOWER: But whatever went on in those readings and workshops happened effectively off the grid.

[3:39] BEN RIMALOWER: In 2021, James Lapine published an indispensable tome on the making of Sunday in the Park with George called Putting It Together, which chronicles the step-by-step development of that show through excerpts from conversations he had with just about every artist and professional involved.

[3:56] BEN RIMALOWER: It made me hunger for this type of granular play-by-play on Into the Woods.

[4:02] BEN RIMALOWER: When I heard he wasn't planning such a book, the idea for this podcast was born.

[4:07] BEN RIMALOWER: Come with me on this fairy tale quest to figure out how the musical we love came to exist in Giants in the Sky, how Sondheim and Lapine went Into the Woods.

[4:32] BEN RIMALOWER: He wrote the books and directed the original productions of Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Passion, all with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

[4:41] BEN RIMALOWER: He shares with Sondheim the Pulitzer Prize for Sunday in the Park with George.

[4:45] BEN RIMALOWER: His numerous other writing and or directing credits on and off Broadway and on film include Act One, Dirty Blonde, Twelve Dreams, Table Settings, and Impromptu, as well as the William Finn musicals, Falsettos, A New Brain, and the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

[5:06] BEN RIMALOWER: A lot of our listenership is going to be theater makers of all stripes. And um, I have so much curiosity about kind of like the nuts and bolts of you as a theater artist and you and Sondheim and everyone you worked with at the beginning creating this new show that is, you know, so influential and iconic to generations now and back on Broadway and all that and the movie, but just back to that beginning when it was just the new show you were working on. I'd love to ask you some stuff about that.

[5:37] James Lapine: Yeah, I mean, we're talking how long ago?

[5:40] James Lapine: 35 years, 40 years, something like that, you know.

[5:45] James Lapine: I'd like to say I remember it, you know, in all its exactitude, but I don't.

[5:52] James Lapine: Let's see, we were coming off Sunday in the Park, and Steve wanted to work on another show, so we just got together and talked about things we were interested in.

[6:06] James Lapine: And when I had first met him, he was really getting into, I guess they're called video games. I mean, I don't know what they were back then, you know, because the computers were kind of new and all of that.

[6:20] James Lapine: You know, it just kind of came up in the conversation, and I was not that technologically savvy, and I didn't have any interest in those games so much, but he liked the idea of a quest musical.

[6:35] James Lapine: You know, the thing he likes about those games is they always had to get something, you know. You sit out to find something, I don't know.

[6:46] James Lapine: And I had mentioned my interest in fairy tales, and we kind of left it at that, and I went off to write an original fairy tale.

[6:57] James Lapine: So let me see if I come up with something I would sit down to write. Because Sunday sort of started that way too, is just kind of see what's in your head.

[7:05] James Lapine: And I did spend some time writing an original fairy tale, and I discovered that fairy tales are short, you know, they're not long, and when you try to make them long, they don't hold up in a way, they become something else.

[7:25] James Lapine: The more I read fairy tales again as an adult, I realized they all turn on a dime and the resolution is very immediate and there's not much character development. They're myths, you know, they're quick myths.

[7:38] James Lapine: So how then hit on the idea of this Baker and the wife, which I think was the source of the original idea I was working on. But if they needed something, wanted something, were after something, that would become the quest part, and that's when the idea hit about trying to do a mashup of all existing fairy tales, which are short, and mix it plot-wise with that.

[8:09] James Lapine: And alongside of that was this notion of happily ever after, you know, which, you know, the historical idea of fairy tales, you know, they go back hundreds of years, is even longer, is that they were there to give hope to people, mostly people who had nothing, you know, peasants and what surfs and whatnot, and they would, you know, they were oral, they were sitting by the fire at night, which was the only light they had, and there would be someone probably the elder person in the family who would tell these stories, and it would give hope that a scullery maid could become a princess, you know, was kind of the idea.

[8:54] James Lapine: At least you always have a narrator character in mind to be part of the storytelling.

[8:59] BEN RIMALOWER: That's a good question.

[9:01] James Lapine: I don't remember. I think probably once I got into mashup mode, it became almost necessary to move the plot along would be my guess.

[9:13] James Lapine: I mean, and then well really what happened then was I wrote the first opening scene which turned out to be all these different stories and then I thought oh jeez this is not the stuff of musicals, you know, but I gave it to Steve and I said to him, you know, I don't think there's any way you can make this an opening number but this is what I've got, you know.

[9:39] James Lapine: And of course in retrospect if you want to get Steve to do something can't he can't do it. And then boy it didn't take him that long to come back with what became the opening number of the show.

[9:54] James Lapine: And then once we had that it was um we just plotted along. We didn't have a plot, you know, I didn't outline a plot.

[10:06] BEN RIMALOWER: And was that when you did that I know there was like a first reading at Playwright's Horizons. Was that of a version that included that or was it just book and no score?

[10:19] James Lapine: Hard for me to remember I know we had what I would call more of a workshop, like a little two-week workshop presentation reading because then we had songs.

[10:29] James Lapine: We had a fair number of songs for each of the characters. I don't believe it was like, you know, Sunday I wrote the whole book and then the music came.

[10:38] BEN RIMALOWER: Right.

[10:39] James Lapine: Yeah. This was um more in tandem one with the other.

[10:43] James Lapine: And we were um I don't know, we were quite in sync by this point. We know first go around with Sunday, we didn't know each other very well, but now having come off of that, we had a different kind of relationship as writers to one another and trust and etc.

[11:07] James Lapine: So yeah.

[11:08] BEN RIMALOWER: And so that workshop also was at Playwrights, is that right?

[11:11] James Lapine: That was a two-week, the one I'm thinking of was a two-week workshop and um that's when we ended up going with you, James, to produce it, yeah.

[11:23] BEN RIMALOWER: And is it right to assume that you had the Schuberts come calling after you had a Pulitzer with some would have thought wouldn't one? The Schuberts came to that reading too and then my old friend Rocco Landesman who I knew from when I was a graphic designer and actually when I was a graphic designer he's the one that hired me to come to Yale School of Drama to do graphic design.

[11:49] James Lapine: So he was not only a friend I sort of owed him my interest in the theater by you know him doing that. And he and his wife Heidi who was a very good friend of mine also who I met there, Heidi Ettinger Landesman, whatever.

[12:04] James Lapine: So they were there at the same time at this little presentation of the reading as was Mike Nichols.

[12:11] James Lapine: And um I was just the first act as usual and uh Nichols wanted to produce it and uh Landesman wanted to produce it and we hadn't heard from the Schuberts, you know, they never called us or in any way could you know uh I don't think they loved it, you know, I don't know.

[12:33] James Lapine: But we never heard from them. And so you know it wasn't like we didn't want to do it with them, but the fact that they showed no interest as far as we could tell, we just ended up going with Rocco as he was my pal.

[12:47] BEN RIMALOWER: And was there any thought to doing it at production at playwrights like you had done with Sunday?

[12:54] James Lapine: Back up for one minute because the other thing is um well um the Schuberts did come were kind of shocked when they heard that we didn't go. I think they just assumed so when we ended up doing Passion you know it was theirs before we even put pen to paper.

[13:16] BEN RIMALOWER: Yeah so straighten that out no we went out of town we went out of town to La Jolla and was it La Jolla or Old Globe yeah yeah so no we didn't uh do a workshop at playwrights at that point.

[13:33] James Lapine: And do was I mean I know that had become something that was more common by that point in the 80s and you know big river and and all that was was that just kind of business type thinking that led to that or um going to La Jolla you mean uh going to Old Globe.

[13:48] BEN RIMALOWER: Was it not to be too big of a show for Playwrights Horizons or or to be better to be no no Playwrights Horizons was a developmental place and particularly when we did that is a huge glass.

[14:01] James Lapine: I like a lot of Diet Pepsi.

[14:04] BEN RIMALOWER: Whoa.

[14:05] James Lapine: Okay. Um, here's my coffee, you know. I have to very carefully sip it, otherwise I'll be like that, you know. Um, uh, you know, my allegiance was to playwrights because that's kind of where I grew up in in the theater.

[14:20] BEN RIMALOWER: Yeah.

[14:21] James Lapine: Um, but by the time I don't remember there being any discussion of doing by that point, it would have been a whole other experience than we had on Sunday. You are we it was you couldn't hide, you know. If you remember when we did Sunday in that little workshop, which I naively thought was this little thing and nobody would know about it. Of course, it ended up being a I think an arts and leisure article or something, you know. Uh I wasn't that aware of Sondheim's, you know, um I guess fame. Uh so um, yeah.

[14:56] BEN RIMALOWER: So we went out of town, and um fortunately it was a time when the the New York Times and others didn't come. They respected that.

[15:04] James Lapine: Yeah. Can't do that anymore. You know, you go out of town now, and you might as well just it's just you can't win.

[15:09] BEN RIMALOWER: Yeah.

[15:10] James Lapine: Yeah. So we went out and um trying to remember. We must have had readings and stuff prior to that. We wouldn't have just jumped out there. We certainly didn't have a second act um around that time that we did the first reading. I know we only did the first act.

[15:27] BEN RIMALOWER: Yeah, I think if we had done the second act, people probably wouldn't have been so quick to come up to us with saying we want to do this.

[15:34] James Lapine: Well, I mean, it's amazing how differently the second act plays even now. Just I mean that my thoughts seeing the um revival and and I mean especially on Broadway, but at City Center also was just the second act seems more reflective of the kind of apocalyptic state we've all been sort of living in, and it almost less dark or something.

[15:57] BEN RIMALOWER: Yeah, I mean, uh, yes is a word I would use. Uh well, you know, what's interesting, I think, is um I was kind of shocked. Well, I wasn't so shocked at Encores because you know, Encores is Encore is very enthusiastic audiences who know shows, and but when I went and saw the show a week or two ago, and I hadn't seen it at St. the St. James, the fact that it's still that frenzied audience who cheers as the lights go down. I realize that 35 years a lot of these people um in the audience have a history with the show themselves. Really um, and I think thematically I don't I don't know uh I think the times have caught up to that second act and so it's all yeah, unfortunately.

[16:50] James Lapine: Um wasn't a fun time when we did it. Remember, it was we started it before the AIDS crisis, but the AIDS crisis sort of happened when we were doing that, and then when we did the revival, we were had no plans for it to be anything apocalyptic, and then 9-11 happened uh while we were in rehearsal. So um, you know, it just seems like the show pops up. But it's a joyous moments in our history. There's always there are always wolves, there are always lies.

[17:23] BEN RIMALOWER: Yeah, yeah, no, it's true, you know. I it's true, and I got I suppose that's true historically of all your, you know, all but you were able to go to do that second act out of the eyes of the the critics, the New York critics at least to go to Sandy. And and was you know, I I know that there was uh I I guess Chip and Joanna were like involved kind of from uh at least what I was able to find online that they were in that production and yeah yeah yeah I don't think Chip was at the I don't think Chip did that workshop but he was uh actually uh trying to remember the name of the guy who did it who I loved who was the first one of the first people I never passed away from AIDS but um yeah but Chip certainly was in uh the old globe and continued with it.

[18:12] James Lapine: And um what I I know I mean obviously there are things that changed um in terms of the the actual story and the characters that probably necessitated casting changes but were there other things that were more um uh about the casting that that shifted I mean I I remember I had known that Ellen Foley had played the witch yeah but then I saw that she was also one of the final uh replacement witches in the Broadway run.

[18:40] BEN RIMALOWER: Um then w how did that all evolve?

[18:44] James Lapine: Um I don't think she was in the Broadway run ever.

[18:47] BEN RIMALOWER: Oh maybe maybe it was as an understudy or something.

[18:50] James Lapine: No I don't think so.

[18:52] BEN RIMALOWER: Oh okay well you know Ellen is great but Ellen had a very rock and roll voice which uh didn't really suit what Steve had ended up continuing to write.

[19:03] James Lapine: Um but she she was very punk Rocky at the time.

[19:07] BEN RIMALOWER: Yeah and it was funny well yeah really fun person.

[19:13] James Lapine: Well you know the the show goes through many, many incarnations of writing. We had Rapon's uh Rumpel Stiltskin was a character and the three little pigs, and you know, we had your whole melange of fairy tale characters running around. It was just it was a very rich pie, and uh we ended up having to take some of the ingredients out, but it was pretty much a mess, you know, a beautiful mess, and we just kept cleaning it up, and we never knew how to get rid of that damn baker's wife because I had this vision that I wanted the show to end with a melding of fairy tale characters and a real character, you know. I always thought of the baker and the wife as being a contemporary character of sorts, you know, they were our window into the world, and they straight into the world of fairy tales. They weren't ever part of the fairy tale.

[20:10] BEN RIMALOWER: So uh we have many, many versions, many, many versions. I don't know where they all are. I'm sure they're in the Sanhan Files, you know.

[20:19] James Lapine: Oh good. Good luck with that. That'll take you a few weeks to go through.

[20:25] BEN RIMALOWER: That's right.

[20:26] James Lapine: Uh well, you were starting to say that you had a vision for how the baker's wife would would die initi initially.

[20:33] BEN RIMALOWER: Well, I I just wanted to get rid of her.

[20:36] James Lapine: I just had this idea of Cinderella ending up with the baker. Ah just felt uh I guess because I s we'd set out in the first act to create the fairy tale world. I somehow wanted to bring the real world in in the second act, and that when they got out of the woods, there was a sense of normalcy. But you know, it's what Cinderella's so great about, you know, she doesn't want to be a princess. She doesn't mind cleaning, you know. You know, it's okay. I enjoy cleaning, you know, that there's a kind of um that reality can be magical too.

[21:21] BEN RIMALOWER: And and the simple, the simple things that we do in life are actually very satisfying if we allow them to be, you know, rather than dreaming of being at the Met ball or something, you know.

[21:35] James Lapine: And um uh that that's so interesting. I mean, especially in a times of kind of apocalyptic type uh uh, you know, adversity that we appreciate those things.

[21:48] BEN RIMALOWER: Yeah, and and you know, Chip and Joanna were basically New Yorkers, you know.

[21:52] James Lapine: Yeah. That was what was kind of fun about them, even though they were in these fairy tale outfits, they were always they had a kind of contemporary New York-y yeah sensibility that was kind of fun and gave them something to play against when they went by these other wacky characters, you know.

[22:09] BEN RIMALOWER: I mean, that incredible American Playhouse broadcast, it it's so, you know, um so many people grew up on that is not just their introduction to um your work uh with songtime, but even just musical theater at all. And you know, we know those um performances, not just the cast album, but you know, all Joanna Gleason's line readings in the book scenes are so iconic now that you know it's it's it's like I it must be a tremendous liability for anybody playing the part to have to go against that.

[22:40] James Lapine: I don't know, you know. I thought that was what was so uh really remarkable about Sarah Borellis, who I whose work I didn't know, and I had uh as a composer or a singer, let alone as an actor.

[22:53] BEN RIMALOWER: Yeah.

[22:53] James Lapine: And I thought um what was kind of fun about it was of course Joanna's brilliant, you know, there's no other one like Joanna who can nail nail things. But I also as a book writer felt kind of good that, you know, even with a very naturalistic and uh kind of take on it, the lines were all still very funny and and you know it worked. So it was uh that was kind of cool uh about that show.

[23:21] BEN RIMALOWER: But you know that it's funny you bring up that recording because they would never let me record you know direct my own recordings and on that one I insisted I was going to direct it. But you know in those days um it was not high tech. You had certain number of tape machines that were running.

[23:40] James Lapine: Wow and you had to call the cameras to which to tape because they didn't tape them all at w uh you know it wasn't all taped they didn't tape them all they just ran I guess I'm not saying that right there was only one machine recording it.

[23:55] BEN RIMALOWER: Wow there were seven cameras you had to say which camera they recorded live.

[24:00] James Lapine: So do you had to storyboard it like a film in advance of the of the shooting is that the idea no I guess so but the thing was I knew the show so well I knew where the camera should be and what the line was coming up and who you wanted to be on. You know and what they would do is bring in these video directors who I'm sure were great at live capture but if you don't know the material you don't know who it's supposed to be on. So you know for instance if you look at the Sunday in the park one I was just not as good because uh it just wasn't as good. They brought in the guy who directed the Golden Girls right thought that was the guy that was gonna record the show.

[24:41] James Lapine: And he just shot it like, uh, same when they did my table scissors. They just shoot it like it's a live concert, you know, which is not the same thing. Anyway.

[24:49] BEN RIMALOWER: Well, I would love for you to film another Sunday in the Park with George someday so we could see our eyes controlled by Lapine. I have a movie version that never seems to be able to get off the ground, but that's what I would want to do. I wouldn't want to do a live. I'd love to do the film version of it, which would be love to see that.

[25:10] James Lapine: I won't give up hope on that.

[25:11] BEN RIMALOWER: So would I, yeah, yeah, yeah. And can I ask you more about casting? Because I know in terms of like Chip, you had worked with him in March of the Falsettos. Um, and that seems like such a clear trajectory. Had you known Joanna before? Had you seen her in other stuff?

[25:25] James Lapine: I had seen her in a couple of things, yeah. Uh, I didn't know her, you know, when we started. Um, she may have actually come in and auditioned. You'd have to ask her. I'm not sure.

[25:36] BEN RIMALOWER: That must have been such a lucky day when she won.

[25:40] James Lapine: Um, yeah, I mean, um, I, it's as I said a long time ago, I don't remember exactly other than I knew that I had seen her and I can't remember what I'd seen her in a couple of things and thought she was just, um, you know, sui generis. Nobody really liked her, you know.

[26:00] BEN RIMALOWER: And, uh, well, not the same could obviously be said about Bernadette, who you certainly worked with.

[26:06] James Lapine: Yeah, yeah. Uh, she wasn't the first. I keep thinking about looking at the poster behind you of Evita, but actually I'd asked Patti to play that part.

[26:14] BEN RIMALOWER: Had you now? Because I there's rumors about that, and then that she wanted to be Cinderella. I mean, is that just Patti LuPone's concocting a, uh, a story or is that real?

[26:24] James Lapine: That's true. I mean, she actually auditioned for Cinderella. She was great about it, said, you know, I know you don't see it, but let me sing the song and, um, uh, it just really, you know, it's funny I already had, I already had Cinderella in my mind as like a beauty pageant witch, yes, you know, which in fact Kim Crosby was a beauty pageant witch.

[26:28] BEN RIMALOWER: Understandably that. Okay, so because Patti has said that she first of all I'm just imagining you and, um, I guess Sondheim and Gemignani like sitting there and Patti singing on the steps of the palace is that the scenario? I mean, because then she also said that she auditioned to replace Bernadette in Sunday in the Park, but you guys didn't want her.

[26:28] James Lapine: I don't remember that at all. I guess it wasn't a memorable audition, but I don't think that's the, I don't think that, I don't know why I A wouldn't want her and B I don't remember that.

[27:20] BEN RIMALOWER: She tells some story that she, she was I guess on the stage maybe it was in a, in her audition studio but that she was singing and and Sondheim came and said too much belting, no belting, stop. But I remember that and then, uh, okay so then she, uh, she sang for Cinderella but it wasn't the right fit at well then you don't have, you know what, that's such a soprano, uh, you know, uh, Steve wrote it he imagined it as being this kind of pure soprano, yeah, uh, and and she has that of course, um, but, uh, no it just wasn't what I envisioned and frankly I thought she was too old for Cinderella.

[28:03] BEN RIMALOWER: Yeah for sure, yeah.

[28:04] James Lapine: And so then, so then you, so then she was offered the witch, that's real.

[28:08] BEN RIMALOWER: Oh yeah.

[28:09] James Lapine: I, uh, uh, she was the first one I offered the witch to the first and then because that's, and then the other thing she says is that, um, uh, that she, there I guess there was a negotiation broke down over I don't know what some kind of contractual points or something but then Bernadette got everything that she couldn't.

[28:09] BEN RIMALOWER: No, no, none of that rings the bell.

[28:09] James Lapine: I love it. Well, I mean I'm not saying it's not true.

[28:33] BEN RIMALOWER: Sure.

[28:33] James Lapine: The thing about it is, uh, you're talking about her replacing Bernadette which I—

[28:33] BEN RIMALOWER: No, no this is now for to be the witch the original witch or Broadway you mean?

[28:33] James Lapine: Yeah, no, well originally it was p, it was, uh, gonna be Betty Buckley for Broadway.

[28:33] BEN RIMALOWER: For Broadway, yeah she was going to, she did the next workshop we did after, uh, after the Old Globe.

[28:59] James Lapine: Oh wow and had Ellen Foley done the first workshop before the Old Globe.

[29:03] BEN RIMALOWER: You know that's an interesting question. I don't remember who did the witch in the workshop.

[29:10] James Lapine: There's also on the, um, it's unfortunately it's not available now but on one of the CD releases of the original cast album there are some demo tracks with, um, John Karen Mitchell singing Jack, uh, and then, uh, Maureen Moore singing I guess Boom Crunch or whatever the earlier version of an act two witch song right while I'm talking to you email Chip and ask him who you know, uh, I offered Patti the workshop the workshop didn't work out with her because she wanted to play Cinderella and she went off to do Anything Goes.

[29:10] BEN RIMALOWER: Oh okay because I thought that was timed with the same time as Broadway but maybe not the pre-production, uh, no I'm pretty sure it was the workshop that Patti came in because we I believe kept the same Kim Crosby for both right all the production yes right I know she was in Old Globe okay so then Betty got the offer Betty did the workshop after the Old Globe did the workshop after and for uh you know a few reasons it didn't really work out and that's when we went to Bernadette because I I guess the thing there was some book um it's called Nothing like a Dame and it's like interviews with these different Broadway actress singers and there's what the Betty talks about I guess in a way similar to what you're saying about the thing with Ellen Foley that the vibe was very rock and roll and that wasn't what she wanted which is so strange to someone hearing that now because of course the witch has all this gorgeous music you know so well a lot of that music wasn't there at that point either it wasn't in in La Jolla um so I guess she hadn't read putting it together yet she didn't know that you that you guys were gonna work and keep working I mean it seems like wouldn't her, uh, you know, I wish I could go back in time and advise her.

[31:01] James Lapine: Well you know what that's the way it works and um I love Betty.

[31:07] BEN RIMALOWER: I would love to have seen Betty do it.

[31:08] James Lapine: She sang the shit out of it and um and it was just part of the problem, uh, the challenge of it was that poor Betty was coming in after we had done La Jolla, you know, after we had done the Old Globe.

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: Oh yeah, uh it must have been, yeah, at least right.

[34:40] James Lapine: And, uh, and we had a company that was pretty tight.

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: So it was just a, a kind of s sort of chemistry thing that didn't didn't play off.

[34:40] James Lapine: But I, I love Betty and I think she's fantastic.

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: She is, yeah.

[34:40] James Lapine: Well okay, so then how, how late in the process was it that Bernadette became involved?

[34:40] James Lapine: Um, I think she came in became involved as we were moving to Broadway, you know.

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: So 'cause I I guess the legend about that is like there was like a lunch like right before rehearsal started and well she's told the story like she begged for the part, but the legend I've heard was that she it was like a last minute like, you know, save us, we have to start rehearsals and we don't have a witch kind of thing.

[34:40] James Lapine: Neither, neither of those, neither, neither.

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: Well she's generous I'm sure also when she tells talk about begging Bernadette begging for a role.

[34:40] James Lapine: Bernadette has never had to beg for a role.

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: No for sure.

[34:40] James Lapine: No.

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: It's A it's not in her being and uh it's not if she wants something I'm sure she would be very forthcoming on that.

[34:40] James Lapine: But no she's not a beggar.

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: But so but so but you hadn't thought of her until until that time period right before the Broadway production started up.

[34:40] James Lapine: I had involved Bernadette had not thought of her for the role until it actually was the moment when then you talked to her and cast her no not initially no.

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: Yeah.

[34:40] James Lapine: I mean you know it's a process I don't and I've just said that but it's a process. It's not like we set out and go, oh you know let's get so and so you know we just write the characters and then we start thinking about and also well Steve, you know, wrote George to be a baritone when we did um Sunday, you know, and uh so you know that was like real shift, but we had just begun the process.

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: And so when Mandy did that workshop, he changed all the keys and everything to suit his voice.

[34:40] James Lapine: So, and because I mean just it's it the witch also seems so molded on Bernadette. It's hard, it's hard to imagine her being not from the beginning kind of part of the—

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: Oh yeah.

[34:40] James Lapine: Well, you know, it was a hard part and she made it her own, you know, one does. Um, but no, it wasn't molded on anybody.

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: It was molded in Steve Sondheim's head.

[34:40] James Lapine: Well, maybe on the, uh, on the page and, uh, you know, you don't he doesn't write the witch because Bernadette's playing it wrong which it's how he's heard her and so on.

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: So well she certainly made it her own.

[34:40] James Lapine: And um, uh, I guess I'm curious how much you were involved in the then during the run of the original, like in terms of um because I know you filmed the the American Playoffs broadcast late in the run, right?

[34:40] James Lapine: That was like, uh, over a year after it opened, I believe.

[34:40] BEN RIMALOWER: Oh yeah, uh it must have been, yeah, at least right.

[34:43] James Lapine: And, and, and like with Sunday, Bernadette and some of the other leads had already left and then came back just for the filming.

[34:53] BEN RIMALOWER: You know more about this than I have no idea.

[34:58] James Lapine: Not well, not enough. I need you to write another book of, uh, you know, the full oral history.

[35:03] BEN RIMALOWER: You should mention it because I've been working on that and writing about Into the Woods.

[35:07] James Lapine: But you know, Into the Woods w Sunday was so embedded in my memory because it was such a, I was such a newbie and, uh, you know, every moment was a moment as somebody might have written by the time we got to, uh, Into the Woods it was, um, just a different, a different vibe and, uh, so my memory of it is what I have to do actually for my own writing I have to go my stuff is in a library and I have to go to the library and look at it all I should I if I'm more, uh, uh, focused on saving things now than I was in those days but Steve on the other hand saved everything so when I have a chance to go through both of our archives I'll have a, I I'll call you then I'll be very much looking forward to it I have a feeling it won't be before your podcast.

[35:07] BEN RIMALOWER: Well that's okay my interest will not die with the completion of this project you can read the book then I'll send you.

[35:07] James Lapine: I can't wait well I'm I'm so grateful for your time I mean this is really uh invaluable and I know that people will appreciate hearing it.

[35:07] James Lapine: Well you're very persuasive so there you go I really good luck with it and thanks for your interest in it and uh take care.

[35:07] BEN RIMALOWER: You too, bye bye. Thank you for listening to Giants in the Sky how Sondheim and Lapine went Into the Woods on the Broadway Podcast Network. Check out episode two where I chat with Chip Zion, the original Baker.