Into the Woods: The Work of Staying
Sondheim Supplement #37
Happy Friday, everyone! Here’s your weekend Supplement, which today includes:
An exclusive essay on the work of staying in Into the Woods, following on from last Sunday’s look at running away
A crossword, asking “who said that?” across various Sondheim shows
More from our conversation with Rick Pender, author of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd and The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia
A look at This Week in Sondheim
A look back at our essay on Sweeney Todd’s “No Place Like London”
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The Work of Staying:
From Blame to Promise in Into the Woods
Flight dissolves direction. But what reconstitutes it? If escape scatters the self, Into the Woods shows us that staying reconstitutes the community, not through sentiment, but through syntax. Act II pivots from blame to responsibility to vow, and the mechanics of that shift are audible. Pronouns change. Modal verbs harden into obligation. Imperatives turn into cautions. What begins as panic (“Your Fault”) becomes perspective (“No One Is Alone”) and ends as stewardship (“Children Will Listen”). Into the Woods enacts the ethics of staying, one grammatical turn at a time.
Blame is the counterfeit of responsibility. It names a culprit without naming a task. And when the giant descends in Act II, blame becomes the only currency anyone can spend.
“Your Fault”: the centrifugal grammar of panic
“Your Fault” is a masterclass in evasion disguised as accusation. The song ricochets between characters, each volley a paratactic jab: “It’s your fault!” “No!” “Yes, it is!” “It’s not!” The syntax can’t sustain a complete claim because no one will bear consequence long enough to finish a thought. Every line is an advocate’s brief; no one testifies as a witness.
The Baker begins by pointing at Jack, then deflects to the beans, then pivots to the cow, then redirects to the gold. Four moves in eight lines, and the subject keeps changing. Jack counters by tracing the chain backward to the Baker. Little Red joins the pile-on, each new claim peeling away another layer of agency until everyone has pointed at everyone else and no one has admitted anything.