History Theatre / IntoTheWoods

* WorldOfCardboardSpeech: The Witch's VillainousBreakdown SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic, "The Last Midnight".

* SmallStartBigFinish: "Last Midnight", the witch's VillanousBreakdown. The song begins with a level-headed tone while she rebukes the characters, but by the end she's shrieking and belting as a storm rages around her.

** "I'M NOT THE LAD!" [[spoiler: [[BreakingTheFourthWall The Narrator]]]]

* GoodCounterpart: The old man to the Witch. He helps the Baker get some of the ingredients, while the witch bullies the baker and his Wife into grabbing them by any means necessary. [[spoiler:It's revealed he's the Baker's Father and wanted to make up for abandoning him. In Act Two, he returns to encourage the Baker to not abandon his son, Cinderella, or the kids. This gives the courage to return and apologize to everyone. Meanwhile the Witch spends her last moments berating everyone before ereactivating the curse on the magic beans]].

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: In both professional outdoor productions, the sexual tension between the Wolf and Little Red is heightened even further when the Wolf appears to be [[DoubleEntendre ''eating'']] Little Red... ''and she enjoys it.''

* BothSidesHaveAPoint: The witch and Rapunzel's argument when the witch finds out she's invited a prince into her tower. Rapunzel points out several things: she can't be expected to stay in a tower forever when there's a world out there to see, and at least the prince gives her more than one visitor apart from her mother. The witch is a cynic who notes something else: the world isn't a big oyster but full of people, animals, and beings who will want to manipulate and hurt you, and princes are not just fine faces or gentlemen; she says Rapunzel doesn't have to hurry to grow up because she's still a kid. They're both right, though the witch crosses the line by exiling Rapunzel to a dessert with little food or water and leaving her even more isolated. Act Two shows the consequences of Rapunzel running off with the prince: he's cheating on her while she's taking care of three twins and can't take care of her mental instability. The witch even laments that she hated being right after [[spoiler:the giantess crushes Rapunzel, and in some productions her grandchildren]].

* AllForNothing: The second act does this to the first act deliberately as a {{Deconstruction}} of fairy tales. The first act is a mythic tale with beginning and end, and the second act is life going on and not ending so neatly.

** The Witch hesitates about sacrificing Jack to the Giantess at first. He did help with the potion. Then Rapunzel dies, and the Witch considers it a form of justice to deliver him to the witch.

* WouldHurtAChild: In the open air productions where the Narrator is played by a child, [[spoiler: the characters are still happy to sacrifice him to the Giantess. Don't worry, he gets better.]]

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Cinderella as the princess. She hears the Baker out about a giant potentially being in the land, and promises to tell the Prince. Then she goes out in disguise when the Prince doesn't return and the birds tell her something terrible happened to her mothers' grave. Sadly, the reasonable part goes out the window afterward.

** Cinderella has a chance to stay with her prince when he spreads tar on the palace steps, or she can run home, back to her mundane life of chores. She admits that he must care but doesn't know if she's fit for royal life; instead, she leaves one of her golden slippers as a clue for him to find.

* HeelFaceDoorSlam: The Baker's Wife goes [[spoiler:MyGodWhatHaveIDone after the prince seduces her. After rationalizing it, she realizes that it's time to gather everyone and leave the woods because she needs to fix things with her family and rescue Jack. Cue the sound of giantess footsteps, and the Baker's wife desperately trying to avoid them. You then hear her scream and see her fall over in the OBC]].

* LosingTheTeamSpirit: A good chunk of Act II after [[spoiler:The Baker's Wife is killed and The Baker has his HeroicBSOD, abandoning the other surviving characters for a while]].

** They also go for the revised second version of how the Witch finds out about the Prince. However does still keep that Rapunzel gets pregnant. In their original publishing they had kept that she reveals she is pregnant naively.

* QuestionableConsent: [[spoiler:The encounter between the Baker's wife and the Prince. The power dynamics at play prevent her from effectively refusing him.]]

* PetTheDog: The Witch towards Rapunzel, except when she's angry at her. In the first act, she instantly changes emotion and starts fawning every time she hears Rapunzel singing. She also returns Milky-White to Jack after the cow produces the potion she desired.

* RealityEnsues: This kicks in ''hard'' in Act II. A FourthDateMarriage does not a successful relationship make, particularly when you've married a PrinceCharmless. Having a child doesn't automatically improve your life when you still have ParentalAbandonment issues to deal with. Spending fourteen years locked in a tower with almost no one to talk to, and then wandering pregnant in the wilderness, does ''nothing'' for your mental health...and if you kill a Giantess's husband, she's not just going to forgive and forget...

* AmusingInjuries: It's really funny when Cinderella, singing instead of paying attention to Florinda's hairdo, twists the bun tighter and tighter while Florinda reels in a circle. [[SubvertedTrope It's]] ''[[SubvertedTrope not]]'' [[SubvertedTrope funny]] when Florinda slaps Cinderella for it a second later.

* AxeCrazy: Little Red Riding Hood, after she and her grandmother are cut out of the Wolf's stomach and start skinning the wolf. She threatens Jack's life just because he takes an interest in her fur cloak! Her grandmother is equally sadistic.

* BabiesEverAfter: Played straight initially in the first act because the Baker and his wife's happy ending is finally getting a child. [[spoiler: However, subverted in the second act because the baby causes more problems at the beginning and the "happy ending" of them getting a child isn't the ending of the musical.]]

** Each act begins with "I Wish". The one in Act 2 is more of a DarkReprise.

** Even worse, [[spoiler:the other prince watches Rapunzel die, runs off in fear (or grief, depending upon how he is played) and only shows up again in the finale with Snow White. At least Cinderella's Prince is shown to be conflicted, and is even told by Cinderella that she no longer wants to be his. To Rapunzel's prince's credit, his wife was insane and he had two kids to think about.]]

* WhamShot: Act Two is going great, everyone's "So happy" -- until the Giantess enters.

** The witch tells the baker offhand that he has a sister that the witch had taken from his parents. The narrator confirms that Rapunzel is indeed his sister. This is never brought up or mentioned, and none of the characters bother with this connection.

** Little Red appears in Act Two to announce she's moving in with her Granny.

* PetTheDog: The Witch towards Rapunzel, except when she's angry at her. In the first act, she instantly changes emotion and starts fawning every time she hears Rapunzel singing.

* WhatYouAreInTheDark: When the Baker's wife and the Prince have a romantic encounter in the woods, he tells her that "Right and wrong don't matter in the woods. Only feelings." After the deed goes down, she spends the rest of the song wrestling with her conscience before finally rationalizing it.

* SpoofAesop: Several characters learn the wrong lessons from their troubles, like the Witch saying "I had everything but beauty. I had power!", or Cinderella's song "On the Steps of the Palace", about learning to duck important decisions.

[[caption-width-right:288:''"I wish..."'']]

[[caption-width-right:288:''"I wish..."''

->''"I wish..."''

Many people are most familiar with the excellent version filmed by PBS under its ''American Playhouse'' banner in 1991 and subsequently released on home video; this was based on the original Broadway production and had most of the same cast. In 2012, a limited-run revival as part of New York's Shakespeare in the Park starred Donna Murphy as the witch -- just months after she could be heard playing much the same role in ''WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}}''.

* TheSoprano: Averted (mostly) with both Cinderella and Rapunzel, at least by the second act -- they both have quite a bit of [[TheIngenue ingenue]] about them, but neither of them is a PuritySue or SatelliteLoveInterest.

The show is one of Sondheim's most famous, alongside ''Theatre/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'' and ''[[Theatre/CompanySondheim Company]]''. In the year dominated by ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'', it was able to snag three Tony Awards, for Best Score, Best Book, and Best Leading Actress (Joanna Gleason as the Baker's Wife). The original Broadway production has since been followed by a notably contentious revival in 2002, as well as numerous productions across the country at everywhere from the regional to the high school drama level.