This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:01] Ben Rimalower: Once upon a time.

[0:04] Ben Rimalower: Broadway Podcast Network presents Giants in the Sky.

[0:07] Ben Rimalower: How Sondheim and Lapine went into the woods.

[0:10] Ben Rimalower: With me, Ben Rimalower.

[0:12] Ben Rimalower: Today's guest, Ira Weitzman.

[0:14] Ben Rimalower: Ira Weitzman is the Mindich Musical Theatre Associate Producer at Lincoln Center Theatre.

[0:20] Ben Rimalower: In his various roles as dramaturg, associate producer, and producer, he has been a vital and instrumental creative force shepherding the original development of some of the most beloved and impactful musicals of the past 45 years, including Sondheim and Lapine's Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, and Passion, as well as Sondheim's Assassins and the Frogs, and William Finn and James Lapine's Falsettos and A New Brain, plus Parade, The Light in the Piazza, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Once on this Island, and Marie Christine, along with many others, not to mention some of the most acclaimed revivals and off-Broadway productions.

[1:03] Ben Rimalower: So I think I understand, come from the progressive Jewish New York background, and I know that you were just like a kid fresh out of high school when you went and worked, was it for Bob Moss at Playwrights Horizons?

[1:22] Ira Weitzman: Yes. Bob gave me my first job in the theater, although it was not my first actual job. I was working as a teenager in radio, and I was very lucky to have found a little niche. I have found little niches for myself all throughout my career, and they've been very lucky for me because they've been exactly the right ones at the right time. And I was taken under the wing of somebody who produced concerts for radio, who taught me how to produce concerts as a teenager. So my very, very first job was as a concert producer of live radio concerts in non-profit, non-commercial radio. But I really had a passion for theater, and eclectic, all kinds of music, everything from the Juilliard String Quartet to the Ghanaian Drum Ensemble, and every possibility.

[2:26] Ira Weitzman: Anything Broadway related? And it was a great...

[2:27] Ira Weitzman: No, I... Well, no, not true. I did a radio... I did an original radio musical written by Galt McDermott, the composer of Hair, 70s, something like that. I don't even remember the name of it. Anyway, I mean, I dabbled in theatrically themed concerts occasionally, and I also, as a sideline, did radio programs about theater, and I was really educating myself in theater. And at the same time, well, I think I was educating myself because I had a passion for it. And the passion was just beginning to bubble up. Because I really didn't know what there was for me out in the world to do. I was really kind of searching for that, and I was very young, so it was the right thing to do at that age. I ended up feeling like radio was not my thing, and I got a tip off that Bob Moss was looking for an assistant.

Bob Moss was the founder of Playwrights Horizons in the early 1970s, and the first artistic director there. And I had a tip that he was looking for an assistant. So my first job at a radio was kind of a great all-around apprenticeship. I learned a lot about theater. I did every job, you know, because it was kind of an all-hands-on-deck, off-off-Broadway, no-money universe where we all kind of did everything. And so I learned a lot.

[4:19] Ben Rimalower: I understand you're the one that launched the musical theater at Playwrights in Trousers?

[4:27] Ira Weitzman: Yes. I was just about to say that after a year working with Bob, I think my real passion was, or my real desire to find a place in, were musicals. And musicals were not something that Playwrights Horizons had been able to do. You know, they're costly, they're tricky, they're fragile, they're complicated. The nonprofit did not really, outside of the public theater, which was one notable exception, really the nonprofit theaters in those days, even the regional theaters, did not really dabble in musicals. So this was kind of a pioneering territory. And for me it was, I thought, why aren't we doing musicals? Our charter was to support the development of new American plays. And I went to Andre, at one point Andre Bishop, who by then had taken over from Bob, the artistic director, and I said, can't we do the same for musical people that we are doing in supporting Playwrights?

And being a kind of New York, not a kind of, being a New York kid and a lover of musicals himself, he heartily agreed, and that was how musicals came to Playwrights. And yes, the first one, again, a very lucky kind of break at the right time and the right place. The first person I met writing musicals was William Finn. And I was invited to a, well, a reading, I suppose you'd call it at that point. It was just a presentation of a song cycle he'd been doing called In Trousers. And this was my dream come true. This was exactly what I fantasized about. I mean, I'm a 21-year-old, you know, high school dropout with a passion for developing and a passion for musical theater. The first person I meet is William Finn. The first show I get to work on is In Trousers. So really that set the stage for both us at Playwrights Horizons and me as an individual in really devoting myself to the development of musicals.

[7:03] Ben Rimalower: And, I mean, well, did that score blow your mind? I mean, I guess you'd worked with Galt McDermott. I assume you had some taste for rock and roll also.

[7:14] Ira Weitzman: Yeah, but rock and roll was separate from theater music at the time, you know. I mean, it was that period of time, you know, there was about 20 years in between the height of the Rodgers and Hammerstein era and the height of the Stephen Sondheim era. Where, as you know, pop music, rock music was not really a part of theater.

[7:39] Ben Rimalower: Right.

[7:40] Ira Weitzman: I mean, Hair, you know, Hair was a special kind of hybrid to me.

[7:44] Ben Rimalower: Right.

[7:45] Ira Weitzman: And you're quite right. I loved Hair. Growing up, that was my father's album was Hair. My mother's was South Pacific. My father's was Hair. And my father was the more conservative parent, believe it or not. So it was kind of odd. But anyway, I loved Hair. The Galt McDermott thing was a fun detour. But no, I think I was grown up. I was raised as part of the Sondheim era. I call it the Sondheim era where he was beginning to dominate the innovations in musical theater. And now, you know, people have talked now for 20 years about all the sort of wannabe Sondheims and, you know, sometimes even derogatorily they'll talk about up and coming composers that way.

[8:38] Ben Rimalower: Was there a crop of sort of wannabe Sondheims already in the late 70s? Because certainly all those great shows had happened in the 70s already. Did you hear that influence? I mean, certainly you can hear it in In Trousers, I would guess.

[8:54] Ira Weitzman: Yeah, Billy Finn had a lot of influence. He was very influenced by the singer-songwriters that were beginning to emerge at the time. He had a kind of a vocal layering interest the way someone like Laura Nero used to do. He wrote in a more confessional first-person style, even though it was veiled in character. And, you know, not necessarily overtly autobiographical. But yes, he was writing from himself, which is something that theater writers have not really done. So Billy Finn was a slight bridge between the two worlds.

[9:43] Ira Weitzman: I would call the admirers of Sondheim's work, I wouldn't call them wannabes. You know, we look back on it and, of course, nobody could ever reach the genius and the heights of Sondheim and Sondheim together with his collaborators. And so now, you know, it appears like and it was true that he was the pinnacle of a certain kind of writing that we all know and love now. And there were people, I think, who admired it, young writers like me, who, yes, I, you know, for me, Company was my first show that I attended as a sentient teenager, you know, as somebody that actually was beginning to be an adult. And I was starting to go to theater on my own and I went to Company and Company was a little bit probably beyond my understanding, but the sound and the scope of it was clearly something new and different than I had listened to on albums before or seen in theater before. Probably the only show I'd seen before or one of the few shows on Broadway I'd seen before Company was, you know, Mame. So, you know, it's kind of the polar opposite of Sondheim in a way.

[11:10] Ira Weitzman: Yeah. Anyway, young people, I think there were a lot of young people who were inspired by the intelligence and innovation.

[11:17] Ben Rimalower: Yeah, I didn't, that was a non-serious comment. I just meant the influence of Sondheim, you know, at that era. I mean, because I imagine if you were looking to bring new musicals to Playwrights in the late 70s, you were listening to a lot of, I don't know, demos, readings, reading scripts, you know. And I guess from that time, James Lapine started working at Playwrights before Sunday in the Park with George happened. So, did you have a relationship with Lapine before you had a relationship with Sondheim, personally, I mean?

[11:51] Ira Weitzman: Oh, yes. I had a very strong relationship with James from the very beginning. James's first play at Playwrights Horizons followed In Trousers in the main stage theater. It was called Table Settings. And then he followed In Trousers in the studio theater, which was a smaller theater, I believe it transferred. You know, we were into transferring from the smaller to the larger theater. Because the smaller theater was of course considered more experimental and a little more risky and all of that. So, yes, I knew Lapine well. I was, you know, my first encounters with Lapine was not only with Table Settings, but as a graphic designer, because I asked James to design the album cover for In Trousers, which he agreed to do.

[13:04] Ira Weitzman: And Bill Finn was then, you know, he was the most charming contrarian you would ever meet. Because the answer to everything was always no. But it was said in the most charming and wonderful way that you just thought no, yes, no is a fine answer. And Lapine, you know, designed several different versions of the album cover of In Trousers and Bill Finn, who I think probably had some kind of executive producer authority on the album or certainly approval, you know, it was, it was. And he was being his kind of wonderful contrarian self, Bill Finn, so he would reject all the album covers except, you know, the one that was the least favorite of both Lapine and me.

[13:58] Ben Rimalower: And just for the listeners that Lapine had no involvement in In Trousers, other than this fascinating tidbit that you're telling us about his graphic design work, I mean, he was, this is prior to their collaboration on the shows, right, I mean.

[14:14] Ira Weitzman: Correct. But Bill Finn directs In Trousers too?

[14:20] Ira Weitzman: No, you're quite right. He was not involved in the production of In Trousers, however, he was involved in the community of Playwrights Horizons. And community is proximity and proximity is collaboration, ultimately, if you want to draw a direct line. And we all knew, you know, Bill Finn in those days was, he was an auteur, he had to wrap his arms around the whole project. And Trousers was something that he wrote, he started, he directed.

[14:54] Ira Weitzman: I mean, there really wasn't a hat he didn't wear, except, you know, the three ladies in the cast, and maybe the set designer. And we were, as our commitment to Bill Finn got more serious, which he did right away, because he was clearly such a unique and glorious talent. And we all were, we were trying to figure out what is the organic collaboration that is going to push Bill Finn forward, take him out of himself, because it's really impossible to be the writer, director, star, and, you know, play all the parts except the women, you know, at the same time, and, you know, to write a new work. So, you know, I think that's where the proximity of Lapine came in. And Andre at some point introduced Lapine to Finn, and, you know, the rest is history.

Okay, I want to push ahead a little bit. But I think this is interesting, because it seems like in a sense, the collaboration between Lapine and Finn that I'm only learning today, as I'm sure many people will be, began with a graphic design for the album cover of In Trousers, led to March of the Falsettos, big success for Playwrights Horizons as a musical theater producer and for Ira Weitzman. And I have to imagine that that, in a sense, was partly responsible for the inspiration, either to you, or Andre, or Lapine himself, or Sondheim, you know, that began the collaboration of Sondheim and Lapine for Sunday in the Park. Is that right? Yes. What happened was, Andre, after Bob Moss left, and Andre became the Artistic Director, Andre appointed a group of playwrights to be in residence at Playwrights Horizons, to essentially be the resident writers from whom the seasons would draw from, and then, of course, branch out from there.

And they all received a commission, and Lapine was one of them. And for Lapine's commission, he told us that he had been talking to Sondheim about collaborating on something, and that he wanted to develop that as yet unnamed, unknown work as his commission for his residency. So that's basically how Sunday in the Park ended up at Playwrights Horizons. I mean, were you over the moon as a sort of Sondheim head? I mean, James Lapine could have said to you, I'm doing table settings too. And instead, he says, I'm doing a musical with Stephen Sondheim. Yeah. First of all, Sondheim was in transition at the time. It was just following the failure on Broadway, the commercial failure of Merrily We Roll Along.

And I think there was a din of criticism from the, it was pre-internet. Don't forget, everything was word of mouth back then. Everything were the crowd of people that went to the first preview and then called up all their friends on their touchtone phones and said, oh, the Jews I saw last night. And then, that was the internet of the day. And I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought.

[19:06] Ben Rimalower: That's okay. We don't have to get too much into the weeds on the failure of Merrily We Roll Along. But I understand that that was a time of transitioning. And nobody knew what Sunday in the Park with George would be. And Lapine wrote that wonderful book last year, Putting It Together, that really details how it all came together. And of course, honestly, that book was part of the inspiration for doing this podcast on Into the Woods, because I wanted to get that kind of granular sense of how Into the Woods came together. So I guess I want to know, I mean, Sunday in the Park with George, as successful as March of the Falsettos was for you, and obviously for Bill Finn and James Lapine and Playwrights Horizons, Sunday in the Park with George, much more so.

It moves to Broadway. It's the darling of the New York Times. It wins the Pulitzer Prize, all these Tony awards or Tony nominations anyway. And so, in the midst of that heady success, I mean, you talk about the transition.

[20:11] Ira Weitzman: May I interject, just only to say that Sunday in the Park with George was a success destined. It was not, it was, you're quite right, it was something that the New York Times wrote about a lot, and promoted. And without the internet and all of the many outlets for promotion, you know, that we have today, that kind of thing was important. But Sunday was not a universally loved show.

[20:39] Ben Rimalower: Right. No, I understand that. But nonetheless, I mean, that might matter if you're the Schubert's or, you know, Sondheim's agent cashing the checks. But for you at Playwrights Horizons, the nonprofit theater that generated the show, I mean, that was a huge accomplishment for Playwrights Horizons to send this Sondheim musical to Broadway as Pulitzer Prize winning. I mean, I think that that's where you're coming from, right? I mean, yes, regardless of who was, you know, it's one thing to parse words on the success or failure of Merrily We Roll Along, which was a Broadway flop. Sunday in the Park with George losing a Tony to Jerry Herman or not being box office bonzo is still, I think, widely can be seen as a success in our purposes, you know.

[21:27] Ira Weitzman: Absolutely. Sorry to nitpick.

[21:32] Ben Rimalower: No, no. Listen, I couldn't love you more for nitpicking. We want, you know, especially when we're talking about Sondheim, we cannot speak in general terms that don't take responsibility for the nuances.

[21:48] Ira Weitzman: Right. But in the midst of this heady moment for Playwrights Horizons, when did it first come into your consciousness that there was a next collaboration between Sondheim and Lapine and that it even, I don't know if there was even a title, but that it was something fairytale related or what have you?

[22:08] Ira Weitzman: Yes. I wish I could remember exactly. Everything was quite organic in those days at Playwrights Horizons. Everything seemed to grow out of the thing that came before in some natural way. So I don't have a benchmark where I could say, oh, there was that day that I heard about, you know, probably Lapine told me about it, that he was working on it. And I believe he started writing monologues for the various characters, particularly the baker and the baker's wife, who were inventions of Lapine's. They were not existing fairytale characters. He told me they were dealing with the psychology of fairytales, which is not really actually what they ended up writing about. Right. But we all went out and read Bruno Bettelheim, you know, started to get into it.

And I do remember when I first discussed Into the Woods with Sondheim. That's a nice little story, if you want to hear that. Shortly after, it was either in between Sunday in the Park and Merrily We Roll Along in La Jolla or slightly after Merrily We Roll Along, more likely, because Merrily was 85 and Into the Woods was 86.

[23:45] Ben Rimalower: How did you wind up, you had a full time job at Playwrights Horizons, how did you wind up going to La Jolla with this production in Merrily?

[23:54] Ira Weitzman: Oh, I was Lapine's, essentially, I was Lapine's line producer. I mean, that's what I did at Playwrights. Didn't have a name, you know, it was just, that's what I mean by I always found the right niche for myself at the right time. But you didn't leave your job at Playwrights.

[24:11] Ira Weitzman: No, I didn't. But I went to Lapine and I said, hey, count me in. Let's find a job for me on Merrily. I mean, the truth was, we were going to do two shows, first Merrily, of course, in California. But Lapine wanted to rehearse in New York, which meant that it needed to essentially be produced in New York. You know, our line produced in New York, you know, in terms of the daily, you know, kind of producing responsibilities. So I ended up, I think my title was dramaturg, but that was not, and I did a certain amount of dramaturgy, you know, if you want to call it that. I mean, did Playwrights Horizons work as a sort of like uncredited shadow producer on the La Jolla Playhouse production of Merrily?

[24:56] Ira Weitzman: No, not at all. It was a completely separate event. It was separate for me. I took a leave of absence. It was not long, you know, it was a couple of months, really, because, you know, it was a month to rehearse, a few weeks to be out in La Jolla. We rehearsed in New York, so it wasn't like I was leaving my job, you know? And this, by the way, this cast was like Chip Zien and, is it Victor Garber and, or John Rubenstein?

[25:28] Ira Weitzman: No, no, no. The Merrily cast was Chip, John Rubenstein, Heather McRae, and Marion Macy's first job. Wow. Her first big break in New York, something I will never, ever, ever forget, as long as I live. She stopped the show every single solitary night, singing Not A Day Goes By. I mean-

[25:48] Ben Rimalower: Anyway, maybe we could, to flash forward into the work, somewhere after the, you know, the Merrily, or in between Merrily and Sunday, I was asked to introduce Sondheim at a lecture he was giving at Queens College. And I was not really anybody that important in those days. I'm not quite sure why I was asked to do it. But anyway, I went, and they sent a car for us, for Sondheim and me. And even though we had done, you know, it was before Merrily, because Sunday in the Park, you know, there was a lot of, I think Sondheim was, he was very quiet during Sunday in the Park with George, you know, he really deferred a great deal to Lapine. He was in a new world, he was in a new milieu in the non-profit, he was in a new world of writing than I think he had done before.

So he was kind of quiet, and I didn't really have much alone time or one-on-one time with him at all during Sunday. So when they sent the car for us to pick us up for Queens College, to go to Queens, I was, I was the, it was really the first time I'd been kind of one-on-one with Steve in a, in a, you know, conversation, you know, and, you know, a conversation that lasted longer than, you know, 10 minutes, and here's the checklist, you know. And I remember being a little nervous about it, and a little, I'm like, oh my god, I'm in a car with Steve Sondheim, you know, and all that. Of course.

[27:37] Ira Weitzman: And I said, I said, how's it going, you know, knowing that they were working on Into the Woods, but not really knowing much about it. And Steve said, I remember him saying, you know, Ira, I'm struggling, I'm really struggling. I've got the five notes, the beans, we call them the beans. The whole score of Into the Woods is based on five notes. And they are the notes that signified the five beans that Baker's father has stolen. And if one listens carefully, one can hear those five notes in just about every moment of every song in Into the Woods. So Sondheim said, I remember him saying in quite vulnerably, I'm really struggling with it. You know, I know I want to base the score on these notes. I just don't have it yet.

And so I, we just started talking about his work with Lapine, and he told me, I think, how much he admired Lapine. And how much Lapine had freed him up in ways that he had been looking for at that time in his life. And then I remember saying something to encouraging words to him about, you know, this, the, isn't this how you begin all your shows, you know, with a musical motif that you build on. And, you know, I mean, we had a little conversation about it. And it was the first time I've had such a conversation with him. And, you know, later, I gotta say, it became one of those pinch me moments where I thought, God, I'm here, we're sitting with, you know, my idol giving him a pep talk about writing. But really, it wasn't about, you know, pinch me, I'm here with Sondheim. It was about understanding that Sondheim was

[29:48] Ira Weitzman: As sensitive, needy, vulnerable, plus, of course, being talented and brilliant as every other great writer that I had known up to that point. And there were a few. And it really humanized Steve for me for the first time. And I think that was the first time I heard him speak about Into the Woods. And, you know, from there on in, it was kind of writing all the way. And he really began to generate material. And then, you know, we headed towards a reading at Playwrights. I believe there were two readings at Playwrights Horizons prior to the Old Globe.

[30:36] Ben Rimalower: Please talk to me about this because James Lapine, who I already spoke to for this podcast, by the way, just that moment with Sondheim, thank you so much for sharing it. And I'm hearing it in the context of an interview I read with you from a few years back, where you talked about your job being to assess personalities and see what's needed in the individual relationships to, you know, to keep the show progressing creatively. And I love this moment of you in the car, dramaturging Sondheim. It's beautiful. But I'm so confused. I mean, Lapine wasn't even sure talking to me. I mean, he said he was going to ask Chip. So I guess I can ask Chip too, although I don't think he was involved yet. But there was a reading at Playwrights Horizons. Then there was a workshop at Playwrights Horizons. Then you had the Old Globe. Then another workshop.

[31:32] Ira Weitzman: No, there were there. Well, yes, yes, yes, yes. In the larger scheme of things. Yeah, you got it right. There was a the first reading is hazy in my mind. I don't. I don't believe that there was much music, if any music involved. I have a memory of the baker's wife being played by Christine Estabrook. Oh, who was a, you know, not a singing actress. Yeah. Now I might be making that up. But, you know, it's a good one if I'm making that up because I love it. Yeah. I don't remember anybody else in the cast, but it was very common in the Sondheim, Lapine collaborations and in general in the Sondheim collaborations that I've worked on for there to be a very, very preliminary reading that did not involve much music at all.

The idea of which was to inspire the writing of music. Yeah. To let Steve and James, in this case, hear out loud, because the bottom line is, you know, you can read it on the page all you want, but, you know, theater is out loud. Yeah. You know, and to be active in full dimension. So yes, readings become important as a learning tool. So I believe there was a reading. And we think that was like a table read, like it was no audience, like it was just, you know, you all at around a table with a few actors to read what there was. Yeah. We didn't even sit around a table in those days. We just lined up some chairs and stands and put them in a semicircle and did something informal. I wish I could remember.

I'm pretty sure that the opening sequence, you know, that whole long set piece that opens into the woods was written very early on. And it could not have been Christine Nassar's book if we were doing singing in that reading. And I wish, you know, somewhere, Daniel, you're going to, you know, kill me for this, but somewhere in my storage facility that I could not, you know, get to in time or files that probably have answers to some of these questions. But at the moment, my memory is not good enough. But I believe there was an initial reading there, there followed it some months later, I think in maybe June 86. Yeah, there was a full on kind of stage reading ish presentation, you know, with a fairly full cast.

[34:29] Ira Weitzman: And I don't remember how long it was in between. But at that point, there was music. There probably was not act two, to speak of, but there was definitely an opening number, we had definitely started to think about casting more seriously. And that reading did become a little bit of a blueprint of what was to come. The unfortunate thing, which, you know, unfortunately, has no, really has no bearing on anybody but me, but I caught a bad case of strep throat. And on the day of the presentation of that reading, I was at my worst, most high feverish, couldn't speak, couldn't do anything. It was so contagious with strep throat. And so I couldn't even attend that reading. I watched every I watched every rehearsal, though I was, you know, I knew the whole thing backwards and forwards, but was a rare time in my career where I actually missed the event. But anyway, it was it was a much more fully realized material than the initial reading, which was purpose was really to inspire.

[35:57] Ben Rimalower: Yes. And you're saying this was likely more fully realized in the first act, but it was certainly a lot of material in the first act, at least.

[36:06] Ira Weitzman: Yes, that's my recollection. Now, there's are you familiar with this website, Overture.com? It's like O-V-E-R-T-U-R. So there's a cast list for this reading there. Can I ask you to verify any of it?

[36:20] Ira Weitzman: Yeah, well, definitely Joanna Gleeson. And we should talk about casting, because I actually had the most. I think I had the most influence in those days. Yeah, there were a few people who ended up staying with the show the whole time. I mean, Danielle Furland, you know, Sunday. The Baker was a wonderful, wonderful actor who very, very sadly was, you know, died of AIDS. And, you know, this was in the 80s when that was a sad, very, very sad fact. Yeah. Ray Gill. Yeah. Ray Gill had been in our production of Merrily in La Jolla. And I think he kind of represented how Lapine saw the Baker at the time. Ray Gill was a little bit, he was a round man with a wonderful, warm and happy face. And a very, very warm and generous personality and presence.

And he did, he was in the sort of feature ensemble in our Merrily in La Jolla. So he did the Baker in that. And in that presentation, as I recall, and then sadly died. Yeah, there were, I think other people were kind of drawn from Lapine's, you know, world. I mean, Ray Gill had been in Merrily. Mary D'Arcy was Cinderella. She'd been in Sunday. Yeah. Bob Gunton was a big New York musical actor, you know, at that point, you know, I think with Evita, you know, on his resume. I was considered a big gay. Bobby Leonard, who, you know, grew up to be Robert Sean Leonard. Robert Sean Leonard, yeah. Bobby Leonard was what he would be called at that point, as a kid actor. Joy Franz, Joy Franz had been in Merrily also. Right. And so here she is just from the beginning as the only stepmother for the ages.

[38:47] Ira Weitzman: Exactly. She went on, she continued. Barbara Brinn. Only Jack's mother. Jack's mother, so she stuck with it. Yeah, the princes were, you know, they were Howard McGillin, I think was a prince. Yeah. Patrick Quinn. Yeah. Very, very funny. Yeah. Wonderful. Over the top, Patrick Quinn was one of the princes. I know that that website says Betty Buckley was the witch. Yeah. Which you'd think I would remember that very clearly, wouldn't you? I don't remember that very. Well, you do remember she was the witch later on. Yes, of course. And I knew Betty at that point. Yeah. You know, she was a presence in my world. And I only, I'm only saying Betty Buckley because she's in that, you know, she's on that list, which is, it seems to me pretty accurate.

Yeah. I don't actually remember, to be honest. But I think she has actually, I'm going to try to talk to her actually, but I think that she has referenced having done two separate workshops of it. Yes. She did the post Old Globe workshop. So that would suggest she also did this one. Correct. And I'm just, I guess I'm curious why she didn't go to the Old Globe in between.

[40:23] Ira Weitzman: Well, Lapine, we get a lot of auditioning, you know, of the roles that we weren't, we had done some auditioning for that workshop, including Joanna Gleeson. Joanna Gleeson, I'm going to claim, we had a wonderful, really incredible casting director, the first casting director at Playwrights Horizons, whose name was John Lyons, who went on to be a wonderful film producer. Yeah. But John and I used to work closely together on casting the musical projects. And so there were a few auditions, I think, for that workshop. I do remember Joanna Gleeson auditioning. And I remember requesting Joanna Gleeson, but she was not a known, she had made her debut in a show that I love, you know, it's somewhat dated now, I suppose.

I Love My Wife, Broadway, a really kind of swell, jazzy Broadway musical by Si Coleman about, you know, open marriages, you know, it doesn't quite, you know, had a great score. Yeah, totally. Still enjoyed today, but it's not, you know, I would say it's not a relevant subject matter to us today. But Joanna Gleeson was a standout. Yeah, I remember looking at her, and it was such a, she had a way with a quip. She had an understanding of human, she could take the funniest comedy line and find the humanity from, and that was clear from a straight on, you know, contemporary musical comedy, like I Love My Wife. And Joanna Gleeson stuck in my head, and she would often audition for us. And, you know, sometimes I will remember, you know, people have audition songs that they do regularly.

And, you know, when on the second, third audition, you know, you kind of know what somebody's going to come in and sing, you know. And her go to, I think, was What Do I Have I Don't Have Now from On a Clear Day. Oh, yeah. Which she sang brilliantly, and had just this quality that I'm talking about. It was a song that was wry, but full of just humanity. You know, I used to be, what did I have in my old reincarnated life that I don't have now that the guy won't fall in love with me? And it's a witty song. I imagine her being so, so witty, like she was making up all those words as she went along. Witty, but humane. Yeah. She found that her comedy came from character, even if it was just an audition.

And I think that that was very impressive for the baker's wife. Yeah. So anyway, Joanna ended up getting cast, you know, for the baker's wife. We had, I'm just looking to see if there are any other people in that company, from that reading that were, and Nancy Opel, you know, a lot of the kind of sometimes stalwarts of the moment, you know, Nancy Opel, Joy Frantz, you know, a lot of the Danielle Ferland, you know, a lot of these people were people that, you know, Lapine had developed relationships with. But after that reading, the show was picked up by, well, at the time, they were kind of New York's power producing couple. And, you know, they're kind of no longer together, but Heidi and Rocco Landesman, now Heidi Ettinger, who was a brilliant, brilliant set designer and brilliant producer. And her husband, Rocco, was the head of J. Jamson, and they picked up the rights to.

[44:42] Ira Weitzman: And then brought her in for an audition after having seen her at the O'Neill Conference in Connecticut, in a reading of a musical based on Fahrenheit 451.

[46:46] Ira Weitzman: Oh, wow. There was a musical based on that book. It was actually quite good, surprisingly good, although it didn't really go anywhere after that. But Kim was really wonderful in that and had a kind of a, well, she had a youth and an innocence, really, that was very right for Cinderella. And she had a terrific voice. So she, I remember she did a series of auditions and ended up getting the part against a slew of more well-known, you know, singing ladies at the time.

[47:47] Ben Rimalower: Did she? I mean, I've heard the Patti LuPone story. And you know, Lapine was laughing about that too, but saying that that was not a serious consideration. She was sort of typed out of the role. But were there people that were serious contenders who were sort of more established than Kim Crosby?

[48:07] Ira Weitzman: Probably, but I can't tell you off the top of my head who they were. I could probably go back to my list somewhere and extrapolate them, you know. I have to imagine everybody who is a soprano, and there were more legit sopranos in those days because there was more calling for, there was less power belting, you know, there was less kind of a high pop belt, power belting that one hears today. So there were still jobs for legit sopranos. And so there were more young women in those days with legit voices. So Kim really, she did beat out quite a few more. I mean like were Christine Andreas or Christine Ebersole in the mix?

[48:59] Ira Weitzman: Probably, probably were. And probably almost anyone you could name who was the right age at the right time was on that list.

[49:10] Ben Rimalower: Gotcha. And then, you know, they start, you know, the casting process is such not everyone's available, not everyone's interested, you know, whatever.

[49:19] Ira Weitzman: Yeah, sure. You know, the Sondheim collaborations, you know, they always got a little extra attention from everybody and the agents and the actors, everybody wanted to be in them. So it was a lot easier to attract people, you know, in those days for these kinds of shows. But the lists were pretty good. My recollection of the list for all the characters is they were pretty good lists of pretty well-known people.

[49:51] Ira Weitzman: She stood out. She stood out, I think, for her in a sense and Lapine loved working with, you know, directors often like to both work with people they know very well because, you know, there's an ease of communication with people who they know. And also they like to work with new people because there's an excitement, you know.

[50:17] Ira Weitzman: Going back to the witch for a minute. I remember back in those days, Lapine always would ask for, he would ask all the casting people, well, you know, who's, because there was a schism, which we mentioned earlier between, you know, rock music and theater music. You know, there were kind of, people didn't cross over quite as easily as they do today.

[50:42] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[50:43] Ira Weitzman: And there was not an interest in crossing over the way there is today. But Lapine would always ask for like, isn't there anybody, you know, in the rock world, in the pop world, you know, Pat Benatar used to be on every list we made, even though there were no theater chops to speak of. Ellen Foley, who ended up playing the witch in The Old Globe, came under the heading of, she straddled the kind of pop rock, you know, universe of singers. And yet she also had theater experience and acting chops.

[51:25] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[51:26] Ira Weitzman: So when it came to, you know, I think the witch was not as defined as she later came to be. And I think the true definition or development of the character of the witch truly began and was refined when Bernadette was cast later.

[51:47] Ben Rimalower: So let me ask you a question about that, because there's sort of the legend of Bernadette. I don't know. There's different versions I've heard. Oh, she was at lunch with Sondheim. They were about to start rehearsals and he was saying we're desperate for somebody. And she said, well, I'm available. Or James Lapine called her, all these stories. But it was last minute. But how is it that coming on the heels of Sunday in the Park with George, her name had not once come up in the two years of workshops until Broadway preview or Broadway rehearsals were about to start?

[52:20] Ira Weitzman: I think it's more about the character than the actress.

[52:23] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[52:28] Ira Weitzman: There was a little, you know, Bernadette in those years was still very ingenue-ish.

[52:34] Ben Rimalower: Right. Was she considered for Cinderella?

[52:37] Ira Weitzman: No, I don't remember being considered for anything in particular in Into the Woods. There didn't really seem to be anything for her. She was probably a little too. She was probably a little older than what Lapine had in mind because it was about a girl. Cinderella was a girl, and I use the girl in the literal sense, she was a girl who was trying to figure out how to make choices in life, how to choose this situation from that, how to choose what was good for her. These are the coming of age, you know, and Bernadette was already, you know, a very, very established star. Obviously from Sunday in the Park with George she was even more, she was famous and well, well, well established going into Sunday.

So I don't think it was because there was no consideration given to her I think she simply wasn't considered quite right for any of the roles that we were looking for. She might have been considered for the Baker's wife but Joanna Gleason had a lock on that role really from the word go.

[54:00] Ira Weitzman: And I can't really give you the story of how Bernadette came to be because I didn't work on Into the Woods when I went to Broadway, I went back to Playwrights Horizons.

[54:09] Ben Rimalower: Right.

[54:10] Ira Weitzman: I can't give you the skinny, but I can give you a great story. Well, you know, I'll tell you about. I got two stories that are really worth hearing. One was just a quick one about the casting of Ben Wright as Jack. I had done a show in between Sunday, and right after Merrily, I produced, reproduced at Playwrights Horizons the debut, the musical theater debut show of George C. Wolfe. Paradise! And it was a kind of a allegory of, well it was an allegory about many things and it was just so chock full of ideas and wit, and it was the first time kind of hearing George Wolfe's, you know, voice as a writer, and as a playwright. Ultimately, of course, he became a wonderful director, he did not direct that show.

Anyway, Ben Wright and Danielle Furlan played brother and sister in George C. Wolfe's musical Paradise before, so Ben Wright was on my radar. And when it came time for Jack, we saw a lot of kids for Jack, a lot of young guys, including I remember a notable audition, Christian Slater.

[55:49] Ira Weitzman: Wow. Who was, you know, he was, he was his, if you want to call it a claim to fame I mean he was the son of quite important casting director, Mary Jo Slater, in those days, and, and had done all of her on Broadway I believe, maybe I you know he had scant few credits. And even fewer musicals but he was a name that was on our radar and I remember going to his house and dropping off the material, Manhattan Plaza, and then we had a series of auditions for for Jack and Christian Slater came in and was kind of laid and came in and was very disheveled and it was quite concerning actually and not. He was very. He had lost his concentration during the audition was a little off the wall and Lapine was, you know, who is very attuned to people's feelings and that sort of thing and, and really would hone in on what was going on at an audition said what's, what's the matter and Chris I remember Christian Slater saying you know I was mugged on my way over to the audition.

And, you know, so we got, you know, quite concerned are you okay you this or that. And then it turned out he gave an audition and couldn't really you know he really wasn't a singer. And he was not, you know, completely prepared I don't think it was a role that captured his interest, even as a kid so you know he, it was not a young and audition that was very thorough. And I think quite honestly I'm not not to cast dispersion on Christians later who I adore her as an adult actor. I think that he was saving face, you know, at the time and we're all right came in and nailed the role he nailed that part. He was that he had the most angelic voice, he could hit the notes you know because giants in this guy had a big money no, you he had an angelic face and beautiful red hair and was maybe 14 or 15 years old and he nailed the audition and got that role. Anyway, that there were other auditions I don't remember them as well.

[58:31] Ira Weitzman: But we did we we really were just searching high and low for the baker. At that point Ray Dale had passed away that early. I believe so he was not in consideration for the baker, and I believe he would have been if he had been around. I forget people got sick you know AIDS was was a major, major killer in those days and, and it happened to people quickly. Yeah, and there was no treatment and people just just, you know, people, people's health disintegrated very quickly.

[59:12] Ben Rimalower: Just one more question. Sorry, on the jacks and little reds, were they all sort of adolescence, like Ben Wright and Danielle Ferlin no like little children were thought of for it.

[59:24] Ira Weitzman: Well, you know, the songs were wordy the songs had to be sung by somebody who understood them. Yeah. And the age of the characters were.

[59:37] Ira Weitzman: I think, of Danielle and Ben. I don't think it was far off from their actual ages, you know, the ages that the characters were portraying. Danielle was probably a little older, but she was, you know, a small child. You know, she was not an adult in child's clothing. You know, she was not at all an obnoxious child actor who was just a wisecracking kid. You know, she was a really lovely, funny, witty, adorable kid actor, you know, that we were in love with. Christian Slater was a bona fide kid, you know, he's 14 years old. Ben Wright was 14, 15 years old, you know. No, no, I just mean like, for example, in the film of Into the Woods, it's a little boy. Oh, real kid, yeah. And I was curious if that was ever considered in their original. No, not that young. Yeah. And so, okay, and you said you had another great Jack.

[59:58] Ira Weitzman: Well, I wanted to tell you the story of how Chip Zien got cast. Oh, yeah. That's a lovely story and a fun story, particularly looking back on it. We really were stuck. We were stuck for the baker. James, I think, had Ray Gill in his head as a prototype, who was a little in the, you know, that kind of the round, jovial baker kind of trope, you know. But we didn't limit ourselves to that. We saw everyone. We saw everyone in the world. And we were just not coming up with the baker. Chip's name had always been on the lists because he was beloved by, at that point, he was beloved by Lapine and me and John Lyons, our casting director, and even Sondheim because he had been, you know, in Merrily in La Jolla.

So it was, I think it was a Friday. We had finished callbacks for the baker. We just didn't really have the baker. And I brought up Chip to Lapine, and I said, you know, what about Chip? He's in L.A., he's doing a TV show, but he's available and he's interested. Can we consider him? And Lapine said, let's see if we can get him to come in on Monday. And I called Chip in L.A. and Chip was filming a TV series, I think that series he did with Tony Randall. Anyway, he was filming every day all day. And he said, you know, maybe I could take the red eye on Monday and audition Monday morning and turn around and go right back to L.A., finish filming. And by then I knew Chip, as I said, quite well. And I thought, that does not sound good.

That sounds like he's going to take the red eye. He's going to be exhausted. He was not, I hope Chip doesn't mind my saying so, he was not the most comfortable auditioner. Auditioning is a, you know, a thing unto itself. Some people are very, very at ease. Some people are not. Some people are in between. And it varies, you know, from audition to audition. But I knew Chip was not the most at ease auditioner. And I thought, in my head I'm thinking, oh great, he'll take the red eye. He'll be cranky. He'll audition. You know, Lapine knows him too well. It'll just backfire. And I said to Chip, Chip, I can't believe that I had the chutzpah to say this, because I would never do this today. I said, Chip, say you're not available to audition.

And let me see what I can do about the role. And I would never say that today, because why would you even make a veiled, even hint at a promise that you could not keep? You know, I just can't even imagine the chutzpah of it. But I did that. And Chip said, okay, Ira. He went along with it. And I went back to James and Steve. And I said, after our callbacks on that Monday, we were still not happy with the Baker possibilities. And I said, you know, Chip is filming in LA, or he would have come. He was unable to come. Let's please consider him. And Lapine, you know, thought about it for a little bit, because he was a little outside of what he'd been thinking about. But he went with it and made the offer. And then, of course, Chip was sidelined for the first week of auditions, because he was still filming the TV show.

[1:04:54] Ira Weitzman: First week of rehearsal? First week, pardon me, of rehearsal for the Globe production.

[1:05:02] Ben Rimalower: Oh, wow.

[1:05:03] Ira Weitzman: So it was a little, got a little tricky, but nevertheless...

[1:05:07] Ben Rimalower: Were those in New York?

[1:05:11] Ira Weitzman: We rehearsed, yeah, we rehearsed Into the Woods in New York. We rehearsed at Westbeth, down in the village. Westbeth was a, it's still there. It's a subsidized housing unit for artists, mostly visual artists. But they also had a performing space, a gigantic loft, a rehearsal complex. And it was very private. And that appealed to James to rehearse. And we rehearsed a lot of stuff down there in those days. So yeah, for all different kinds of things. I mean, you either rehearsed at 890 Broadway, which was, at that point, Michael Bennett was still alive, and it was Michael Bennett Studios. Or you rehearsed at Westbeth. I mean, those are the big studios. The Minskoff, they were the Minskoff Studios. I mean, you know, these things change, and it's all different now. But anyway.

[1:06:14] Ira Weitzman: As I said, you know, I took a chance with Chip, knowing that Steve and James had an affinity for him. And that knowing that he was right for the role. Because Chip had the empathy, he had what Joanna had. He had the humor, he had the heart, and he had the killer singing voice. And he could carry a show, which he had shown that he had done before. So anyway, that was the story of how Chip got the part. And as I said, I would never have the nerve to do that today, because I would never put an actor's role in jeopardy. I mean, maybe had he auditioned, he wouldn't have gotten it, you know. And I think the world might have you to thank for Chip Zien and Joanna Gleason in Into the Woods.

[1:07:13] Ben Rimalower: I think that the world, well, the world doesn't have to thank me. But I'm very grateful that things came to be, because they were definitive in their time.

[1:07:19] Ira Weitzman: Yeah. I mean, they were certainly the parts of a lifetime, I think, for both of them.

[1:07:28] Ira Weitzman: Yeah. It's interesting, too, because of that American Playhouse broadcast of the Broadway production and the home video release that is so iconic. I mean, it's really the gateway to Sondheim, even the gateway to theater for just, you know, generations. And so unlike the traditional musical theater thing, where you know the cast album by heart, we all know Joanna Gleason's line readings, you know, of the book. And I mean, it's almost a liability, particularly in her case, because she is such a way, you know, it's like you said, I mean, it's this one-two punch that she can hit a joke in such a specific, hilarious way that almost nothing else, you know, compares to what she does comedically.

[1:08:29] Ira Weitzman: But it's so grounded in humanity. I mean, it's just sort of like obliterates any other option for anybody to do in the role. And everyone has the disadvantage of audiences who already know her entire performance.

[1:08:42] Ben Rimalower: Yes, it's true. It's true. And that's a lovely way to describe it. They were both definitive for me, you know. I would never say the world has made a thing for anything, but I'm very grateful that I was able to, that my role in that original production focused. I mean, I, you know, I really had my fingers everywhere, but I think the greatest influence I had over that production was in the casting. And I have to say, very gratifying for me as time went on, and also as the show took on legendary status, as characters became iconic, as actors who, as the actors who played them. And all of that, I think, was very gratifying for me as time went on.

[1:09:33] Ben Rimalower: I can only imagine. I mean, it is such a landmark show at this point. And, oh, I have another thing I wanted to ask you about. So back into the sort of minutiae a little bit, which is that there are these demo tracks with Maureen Moore and John Cameron Mitchell and George Lee Andrews, Betsy Joslin of the Boom Crunch and second.

[1:09:49] Ira Weitzman: Oh, the bonus, the bonus tracks. Well, there are three tracks that are the bonus tracks on the reissue at one point of the Broadway cast recording. But then there's more sort of from the same set that were released on this Sondheim, The Story So Far box set, and a couple others that fans have traded that, you know, were with the same sort of little company. And I'm curious, I mean, James Lapine had no idea those even existed when I brought it up with him. I believe they were recorded at the time the album was done. But I could be wrong. I could be very wrong. And because I had less involvement as Broadway, you know, my involvement was all in the development. So as it went past, you know, when it, when it came back to New York and went into workshop for Broadway, and then went to Broadway, I mean, I was back at Playwrights, you know, doing my thing.

[1:10:51] Ben Rimalower: Yeah. My guess is that there probably are clues on the actual albums that probably says something about where and when they were recorded, although I don't, I know exactly what you mean.

[1:11:02] Ira Weitzman: Yeah. But, you know, they were cut songs. I mean, there were, there was a lot of writing and rewriting at the OVO. Tremendous amount of work.

[1:11:08] Ben Rimalower: You're saying these were after the fact, like made archivally rather than?

[1:11:13] Ira Weitzman: Yes. They were not contemporaneous with the OVO production.

[1:11:20] Ben Rimalower: Fascinating. That is so interesting. I mean, it's odd. You know, when Patti LuPone did Gypsy on Broadway, the company, Time Life, I can't remember the name of the, I want to say Time Life Records, that sounds wrong, but that released the cast recording, did all the cut songs, you know, the trunk songs from Gypsy with Patti and Laura and Auntie and everybody singing them. It's odd to me that they would have done that for the Broadway recording and brought in these other people to sing.

[1:12:04] Ira Weitzman: Yeah. At the same time, you've got to remember this cast, who's the cast, the Broadway cast recording a show album. Those are the days of, you know, of you recorded on your one day off. Right. Right. You went from morning to midnight. You know, the breaks were few and far between, you know, legally they were breaks of course, but they were few and far between. It was exhausting. So it's like the company documentary, but I'm still poking holes in your theory because it also, if they were done for the Broadway recording, they weren't released on the LP in 1988. They were bonus tracks in 2006 or something, you know.

[1:12:41] Ben Rimalower: But that's when I'm guessing they were recorded. They may have been recorded.

[1:12:46] Ira Weitzman: Oh, no, no, no. I don't think. I'm making this up. I could go back to the stuff I actually know or revisit later. I need to revisit your, when you find your archives. But can I tell you, can I tell you something? Boom Crunch, Paul Gemignani and I, we love that song Boom Crunch.

[1:13:05] Ira Weitzman: Yeah. I mean, it never worked in the theater. It had to be cut. It went through a lot of changes. And that was part and parcel of the development of the character of the witch, which I don't think really came to fruition in the old globe. Yeah. But Boom Crunch never worked for the audience. The audience couldn't really follow it. It was, you know, it was a terrific song. And I remember Paul Gemignani and I used to love to hear it. But ultimately, it didn't work. And, you know, it had to go. And there were a lot of things about the witch that had to be developed and did get developed, of course. There was a song called, I'm sorry.

[1:13:51] Ben Rimalower: Can you tell me about the things about the witch that had to go? I mean, you mentioned earlier that Lapine had been interested in a rock and roll quality and that that was part of the appeal of Ellen Foley was that she straddled both worlds. I mean, was there nothing particularly rock and roll about her other than the rap song, which of course was not rock and roll?

[1:14:04] Ira Weitzman: Yeah. Because Boom Crunch doesn't sound any more rock and roll than Last Midnight. No, I don't think it was directly related to the nature of the role. I think it's related to who is new and fresh ideas for casting. Who's in the crossover.

[1:14:31] Ira Weitzman: And all of the subtext, I mean, that was really developed, you know, much later on. And there were a lot of, you know, remember the Old Globe, it was not a workshop, it was a full out production, it was a full out world premiere. It was as full as it could be, as the writing could make it at the time. Even though there were holes in the writing, and there were things that got cut as a result. There were a lot of, there were different approaches to casting. I mean, the narrator was a separate character from the Mysterious Man. The Mysterious Man was played by George Coe, who had been in the original Company of Company. And he played the old man. And John Cunningham played the narrator. And the narrator was a kind of tuxedoed, I'm not really in the show, I'm the narrator, you know, outside.

And there was a lot of, made of the kind of meta of the narrator. But there was a whole sequence where at one point in the middle of Act Two, the characters turned on the narrator, and started to indict the narrator for not being in the story. And who are you anyway? You're outside the story, but you're controlling us. And, you know, what are you doing? And it led to a whole kind of metaphysical exploration. And there was a song called Interesting Things, or Interesting, I forgot the name of it. Interesting Questions. Interesting Questions. Yeah. And it became a meta, ominous meta moment of, you know, who's responsible for the evil in the world, you know, which was the foreshadowing of Act Two, you know, and all that.

And all of that, I think, got refined as the story became more cohesive. You know, I think Lapine and Sondheim spent a good deal of time making the story, the glue of the story hold together, including the witch's subtext and the witch's background. And I think she was viewed in the Old Globe as more symbolic of someone who was honest about her dishonesty. That was a theme for Lapine, that everybody has to be a little dishonest to get through life. You know, the telling of the small lie to excuse oneself, to pass the blame, to whatever. And that the witch was the one who was honest about her dishonesty, or her evil intent, or whatever. And that was really the theme of The Witch of the Old Globe.

But it became much more than that. It became about motherhood, and the loss of motherhood, and the loss of beauty, and the loss of, you know, the growing older. I mean, many, many things, you know, came to inform that role that were not in play at the Old Globe. So anyway, a lot of, there were a lot of changes all throughout the Old Globe. Every week was, you know, every Monday, the day off, was filled with me and James assisting, cutting and pasting changes. Don't forget, everything was on paper in those days, everything. There were no, there were no, well, there were computers, but you know, there weren't computers that we used, that we're using now, that I'm speaking to you now on a computer.

You know, everything was paper. The paper had to be Xeroxed. Steve Sondheim had to write the song, well, he always wrote the song in longhand, but when it went to the copyist, you know, there was the queen of the copyists, music copyists, the person who transcribed every note, handwritten by Steve Sondheim, was Maddy Pincus of Chelsea Music. She was an amazing character. She was an unsung hero of musical theater, always was. She hand wrote every note of every score in her beautiful, gorgeous music calligraphy. So anytime there was a new song, that thing had to be handwritten and brought in. And you know, it was a thing, you know, it wasn't press a button, hit send, and you know, you get to music and you put it in.

Everything was, you know, so Mondays, you know, at the Old Globe were like the papers were flying, the Xerox was overheating. I mean, everything was, you know, was a mad dash to make the Tuesday rehearsal. And then the rehearsals that followed, which were nothing but changes and rewrites and revisions. Steve would make the most, both Steve and James, but I remember Steve would make the most specific as he was learning more about the characters and James was refining the characters. Steve would make the tiniest, but most incisive revisions. He would change the word in the opening for Cinderella. It was, I want to go to the festival. And then the stepmother would echo, you want to go to the festival?

Well, one day Steve came in and changed, I want to, I wish to go to the festival. And of course, I wish became the metaphor for the whole thing. But there was a little tiny, picky change that really, and Lapine was the same way. He would make the smallest changes. Lapine is a great editor, always was, always will be. One of the few people who could write and go home and criticize his own work. Oh, that doesn't work. I'm cutting it. He was not precious about it. Sometimes he would be unsure, but he wasn't precious. If it needed to go, it went. If it needed to be written, he would rewrite. Steve also, right to the I wants, to the I wishes. Everything was deliberate and extremely beautifully thought out.

There were a couple of songs. I mean, I don't know if this would be interesting to you. There were two songs in particular that when they were written and when they came in, I was particularly moved by. And I think that it might be moving for just a general audience. I mean, I remember we were doing, James asked me to assemble a group of NYU students. And he did a lot of pre-production with NYU kids, where we would have Paul Ford, our pianist, would play various songs and Lapine would just experiment with the staging. He would do it on paper, on a grid, on that kind of, you know, grid paper, you know, that's in squares. And he would chart things out. You know, he was graphic. Don't forget he was coming from graphic design.

So everything was visual with him. Not everything, but visual was where he was his first response. And so, you know, he would work on things and then he would kind of experiment with the NYU kids. Anyway, one day at one of our last NYU kid sessions, which we did two or three once before rehearsal and a couple while we were still in rehearsal. And at the last one, Paul Ford, who had received the handwritten copy of the song No More, you know, for the Baker and the Baker's father, the mysterious old man. And Paul played us for, he played it for us and the NYU kids, who were, of course, you know, we were all so moved by that song. And I had never heard it in rehearsal. You know, they did it, you know, I had heard it in drips and drabs while Chip was learning it, but I had not heard it performed, you know, really performed.

Even when Sondheim came in, he would come in periodically to coach the actors individually. So generous with actors, always, always generous with actors at every moment. His coaching was that of the vulnerable writer I told you about in the car. That was Steve with actors. He would say, if the key isn't good, I'll change it. Let's make this right for you. Are there any words, are there any, you know, he was strong and obviously opinionated and brilliant and who would question any word he wrote. But yet he himself was very self-effacing when it came to sharing it with the actors. And he only wanted the actor to feel comfortable and be able to act the song. And his coaching was always very illuminating, both to the actress and anyone who would listen to them.

Anyway, flash forward to we're at our first run-through of Act Two and Chip and George asked to go over their song no more at the piano before the run-through. And it was the first time I heard it and, you know, really done as in performed as opposed to being learned. And when Chip got to the section of the song, no more giants waging war. Can't we just pursue our lives with our children and our wives? Makes me cry to this day to even say those words. But when Chip sang it for the first time at the piano, I'm telling you, there was not a dry eye in that room. And of course, that was Chip. That was Chip. He had a soaring voice. He could sing loud. He could sing soft. He could sing with great heart.

He could sing with great brass. And that song really required the most heart you could possibly imagine. And even in rehearsal, even at a run-through of the song before a run-through of the act, there was Chip just moving you to tears with that song, which it did. I have to say to this day, that is my favorite set of lines from a song in that show. Anyway, the other song that I wanted to tell you about was there was always a notation, a stage direction in the script before the Baker, Cinderella, Little Red, and Jack kill the giant. There was always a notation, a stage direction that they would sing a quartet. We didn't really know what the quartet was about. We knew that it was important because it was the climax of the show.

It needed to sum up what we had seen. It needed to take us, it needed to be the doorway to the end of the show because everything was going to get wrapped up. And it became a little bit of a running gag between me and Lapine because it was that song. In every Sondheim score, there is a song that gets written very, very late that is the pivotal song. I mean, you can name every show, every song. And there was always this stage direction and we knew it was that song. And I would just joke, we would occasionally joke, James and I, oh, he's writing this song. Oh gosh, are we ever going to see this song? Anyway, we were very lucky. Jack O'Brien was the artistic director of the Old Globe. He could not have been a more generous, as you can imagine, and a brilliant artistic director there.

And he was also very generous with us. You open after a few performances in regional theater. You don't get four weeks of previews like you do in New York. We opened a week after we started previewing. We opened on Thursday, but Jack gave us another week of rehearsals after we opened. So we kind of had a full opening. I don't even remember much about it. A party at the Marriott Hotel or something, San Diego, whatever. It wasn't a big deal because we all were in this frame of mind that we're working out of town on this show.

[1:29:26] Ira Weitzman: We've got to finish. And there was a flurry from Thursday to Sunday. Lapine and Sondheim were furiously writing and rewriting so that we could make the best use of that week that Jack had given us. And Saturday, that Saturday after the Thursday opening, Lapine came to me in all seriousness. And he said, Steve is writing the song. He's writing the song for real. So we were a quiver. And by that week, the week post opening, we had, I think three or four rehearsals. I was scheduled to leave on that Wednesday. We opened the previous Thursday and I was scheduled to leave town on that Wednesday. And Lapine and Sondheim were scheduled to leave town on Friday morning. And on Wednesday during the matinee, I got a call from James saying, Steve has written a song.

And get the actors together tonight. After the four actors together, the Baker, Cinderella, Jack and Little Red, get them in the rehearsal room. Steve will come in and play them the song. And that night after the show, and after, you know, you can imagine a lot of work, you know, the hard, hard, hard, hard work of giving birth to a new musical. And we're exhausted. And here comes this new song. And I remember standing in the doorway of the rehearsal room next to Joanna Gleason, whose character was killed off, unfortunately, before the spot for that song. And Steve sat down at the piano and took out his handwritten sheet of music and sang for the first time for those actors, No One Is Alone. And if I thought I was an emotional wreck after hearing No More, I can't even describe to you the depth of emotion hearing No One Is Alone.

Because of course, it was exactly the song we were waiting for. Exactly the song for the moment in the script that was calling for it. The same way that, you know, all the other 11 o'clock songs that got written at, you know, midnight, and all the other Stephen Sondheim shows, you know, were. And I remember, you know, feeling a little empathy for Joanna, because, you know, they were the four people that were going to get to sing the song. And Joanna knew at that moment, and I was, you know, standing right next to her. So of course, I was feeling her, you know, vibes. And I could feel her disappointment while I was watching everyone else who worked, did have to learn the song and sing it, be so utterly moved.

But Joanna, who is very instrumental, much more instrumental in developing the role of the Baker's wife than any other actor was in developing their own roles. She was very insightful. She and Steve, she would talk to Steve and James all the time about the Baker's wife. And of course, it was the hardest role. The Baker kind of had a trajectory. The Baker's wife was not quite as clear her trajectory, and Joanna put so much of herself into it. And it was very difficult. And as I said, she was outspoken. And in the end, Sondheim, I have to say, I think he listened to a great deal of what Joanna said, a great deal of what Joanna had to offer ended up in the role. I think that line, Sondheim, I think, writes about this.

And in this big old lyric book, she at one point said, I think, I feel like my character's in the wrong story. Because she, of course, was in the wrong story. The Baker and the Baker's wife were contemporary fairytale characters. I mean, they were not in the story of Aesop's Fables or Jack and the Beanstalk and all that. So anyway, after the writing of No More, and further on into the Broadway production, which I had less involvement in, as I said, I think Joanna really... And so she ended up with a little bit towards the end after No One Is Alone. And when the whole thing is being kind of summed up, she kind of comes back to the dead to pass on her thing to her husband and her, you know, the other characters.

So I have to say the... I'll admit what I have never said before to anyone, actually. When Steve sat down at the piano in that rehearsal room and wrote and sang No One Is Alone, I was standing there with my cassette recorder, which was in, you know, how we learned everything in those days, and how everything was archived and all of that. And I flipped that thing to on and recorded that moment.

[1:35:09] Ben Rimalower: Oh, wow.

[1:35:35] Ira Weitzman: And somewhere in my...

[1:35:38] Ben Rimalower: We need the tape.

[1:35:39] Ira Weitzman: Probably disintegrating as we speak.

[1:35:42] Ben Rimalower: We've got to digitize that. That's history.

[1:35:45] Ira Weitzman: I know. There's a lot of history in my life and a lot of history on cassettes in my drawers. Anyway, those are two songs that meant a lot to me. Anything else on your mind about it?

[1:36:00] Ben Rimalower: I mean, I'm curious in terms of the dramaturgy or the script development. I mean, those two songs are arguably 11 o'clock numbers in a sense, or, you know, they both come at that part in the show, No More and No One Is Alone. Maybe Last Midnight's the 11 o'clock number. But leaving that show business term aside, those songs are in that moment. And then we get Children Will Listen. Now, that was not in the show at the Old Globe, right?

[1:36:34] Ira Weitzman: No, it was not. And all of the development... Again, that was part of the witch's... the development of the character of the witch. You know, the mother. The mother who had a mother who mistreated her. The mother who cursed her with ugliness because the witch allowed the mother's beans to be stolen. All of that stuff came after. So really, the dramaturgy was much more rudimentary at the Old Globe. It was much more kind of first drafty, as we say. So a lot of what you're asking, you know, and yeah, we didn't use, by the way, these terms, 11 o'clock numbers.

[1:37:25] Ben Rimalower: Yeah, no, it doesn't apply to us. Those are for... I shouldn't have said that.

[1:37:29] Ira Weitzman: But no, that's okay. I used it too. It's just that we didn't use terms like that. It doesn't fit. But like, so was there no... did she not even have Stay With Me at the Old Globe?

[1:37:40] Ira Weitzman: No. No. There was very little for Rapunzel was an afterthought, you know. Rapunzel was more of a sight gag than a character. You know, Rapunzel and Snow White were sight gags, you know. There was not really, you know, the depth of character. That happened later. That happened after the Old Globe. The kind of stuff that you're... the depth that you're talking about happened after. Are there any things you would still want to see changed if you were back? You know, if you had a time machine to 1986 and they said, you know what, before we start, you know, the workshop before Broadway, we're going to do another two-month workshop with just rewrites every day. Would you have anything on your list that's always not at you?

[1:38:43] Ira Weitzman: Yeah, but I don't know that it's important because... because, number one, the list that I had back then is not the list that I would have now. No. It wasn't even the list that I had after the Old Globe, you know.

[1:39:01] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[1:39:01] Ira Weitzman: I always felt that the end of Act One was a little protracted and that James had a... he loved to... he had a kind of a slightly dark grotesque side that he loved to see. I think he relished the idea of doing the scene where Cinderella's stepsisters would get their comeuppance by cutting off their toes and blood spewing from their shoes. And it was... those were hard to detect. And there was a horse, you know, of the... the prince had a horse and the horse, there was no way to get the horse. The horse had to make three appearances and there was no way to cross over. And it was just a huge technical pain in the neck and we just didn't see how it was ever going to happen. Ultimately, he made it work.

But to me, I could probably live without that and, you know, go right to ever after, you know. It's a very full first act and there are still people to this day that resent the second act, you know, less and less, of course, as time has gone on. But... so maybe that. And one that is not true, at the time I remember not liking the song, It Takes Two. Because to me, it was just not on the level of ingenuity of some of the other songs. I don't feel that way today, actually. But I did then and I remember every time the song would come up, I'd go, oh, here comes the friendship song, here comes the It Takes Two, you know, It Takes Two, you know, la la la. But strangely enough, you know, whenever we would have to, after Into the Woods Open, and we would do benefits and appearances and whatever, and you always have to extract the song and we would always try to, you know, and with a lot of those scores, the Sunday score, a lot of the late Sondheim collaborations, including all the ones with Lapine, it was hard to extract the song to do with somebody's benefit or whatever.

So we would always cart out It Takes Two. Because it was self-contained. It was, you know, that kind of friendship duo song that we all kind of know and love that trope, you know. And so it became a very lovable song. And now I quite enjoy the playfulness of it in here. But back then I was thinking, just cut the song, cut the song. And every time a new song would come in for the baker and the baker's wife, it would be deeper and more beautiful and no more. And then, you know, for the baker's wife, she had moments in the woods, which I think came from Joanna's direct feedback to Steve, enabled him to write moments in the woods. And, you know, the songs written subsequent, you know, to It Takes Two all seemed deeper and more meaningful to me. So anyway, it's a superficial answer to, you know, to a highly subjective question. And I don't really feel that way anymore today.

[1:42:57] Ben Rimalower: Well, I still appreciate knowing it. I mean, listen, I could do two more hours with you. Eventually I want to hear about Assassins and Passion. I mean, you were in the Sondheim development chain for a long time, I guess.

[1:43:08] Ira Weitzman: I did. I worked on the last, we're five, either five or six Sondheim collaborations, you know, the post-Hal Prince ones. I worked on all of them, including five years spent working on what was first called Wise Guys.

[1:43:30] Ben Rimalower: Oh, wow. I didn't know those things.

[1:43:36] Ira Weitzman: And I ended up, you know, that went on for quite a long time, years of development. And I ended up having to withdraw and move on to another project myself. But yes, all of this, you know, every show has a story.

[1:43:55] Ben Rimalower: 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 five with Joanna Gleeson, the original baker's wife.