Into The Woods (1991)

This award-winning Broadway production with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine was pro-shot on stage with an all-star cast. Featuring the original Broadway production in 1989, and just before the show closed, this performance was originally broadcast on PBS as part of the American Playhouse series in March of 1991, episode one of season ten. Into the Woods opened on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on November 5, 1987, and closed on September 3, 1989 after 765 performances.

Bernadette Peters - the Witch
Joanna Gleason - the Baker's Wife
Chip Zien - the Baker
Robert Westenberg - the Wolf and Cinderella's Prince
Tom Aldredge - the Narrator and Mysterious Man
Kim Crosby - Cinderella
Danielle Ferland - Little Red Ridinghood
Ben Wright - Jack
Chuck Wagner - Rapunzel's Prince
Barbara Bryne - Jack's Mother
Pamela Winslow - Rapunzel
Merle Louise - Cinderella's Mother, Granny, and the Giant's Wife
Edmund Lyndeck - Cinderella's Father
Joy Franz - Cinderella's Stepmother
Philip Hoffman - the Steward
Lauren Mitchell - Lucinda
Kay McClelland - Florinda
Jean Kelly - Snow White
Maureen Davis - Sleeping Beauty

The narrator introduces four groups of characters: Cinderella, who wishes to attend the king's festival; Jack, who wishes his cow, Milky White, would give milk; a baker and his wife, who wish to have a child; and Little Red Ridinghood, who wishes for bread to bring for her grandmother.

The baker's neighbor, an ugly and aging witch, reveals the couple is infertile because she cursed his father for stealing her vegetables, including magic beans, which prompted the witch's mother to punish her with the curse of age and ugliness. The witch took the baker's father's child, Rapunzel. She explains the curse will be lifted if she is brought four ingredients—"the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, and the slipper as pure as gold"—within three days.

Act two begins as the narrator continues, "Once upon a time... later." Everyone still has wishes—the baker and his wife face new frustrations with their infant son, newly rich Jack misses the kingdom in the sky, Cinderella is bored with life in the palace.

With a tremendous crash, a giant's foot destroys the witch's garden and damages the baker's home. The baker travels to the palace, but his warning is ignored by the prince's steward and by Jack's mother. Returning home, he finds Little Red on her way to her grandmother's; he and his wife escort her.

The four together slay the giantess, and the other characters return to share one last set of morals. The survivors band together to hail the quartet as their heroes, and the spirit of the baker's wife comforts her mourning husband, encouraging him to tell their child their story. The baker begins to tell his son the tale, while the witch appears and warns: "Careful the things you say, children will listen".