“What’s important, really, is the size.”

Continuing with the Sondheim birthday theme, I just discovered a wonderful free way to watch the Original Broadway Cast in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s fairy tale musical Into the Woods.

It’s generally considered the most accessible of the Sondheim shows and is the only one that is really family-friendly. The original production won three major Tony Awards (Best Score, Best Book, and Best Actress in a Musical for Joanna Gleason as the Baker’s Wife) and ran for about two years. It’s been revived twice on Broadway, but it’s Sondheim’s most produced show with regional and student productions popping up everywhere.

The first act is built around several well known fairy or folk tales: Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Jack and the Beanstalk. These are tied together with an original tale that Lapine and Sondheim developed involving a Baker, his Wife, and a Witch.

All the characters have something that they wish for. Cinderella wishes to go to the ball, the Baker and his Wife wish for a child, etc. In the first act they each find that they have to lie or steal or in some way compromise themselves in order gain their goal, and although the first act curtain seems to end on a happy ever after note, in Act II the characters discover to their dismay that there are consequences for all that deceit.

Note, that Sondheim and Lapine use the Grimm Brothers versions of the tales, which are a bit different and a bit more PG than the versions that most folks know. In other words, just a little bit more blood. But it’s stage blood. Well, what do you expect from the guy who musicalized Sweeney Todd?

Shortly before the original Broadway production closed, the original cast (most of it anyway) was re-assembled, and James Lapine directed a televised film of that production, thus immortalizing it for generations to come. It was televised on PBS and has been available on DVD for a couple decades.

But somebody took that DVD version and ran it through some digital software to enhance the picture and uploaded the result to YouTube. Apparently he has gotten around the copyright problems by allowing any ad revenue that it generates on YouTube to go to the copyright holder, which is Warner Chappell. But it’s currently the only way to watch this video for free that I know of. Or you can use one of the apps that lets you download videos from YouTube, which is what I did.

So here is the link to the digitally enhanced Into the Woods.

Or here is the embedded version if you just want to watch it here. I do recommend watching it on the largest screen with the best audio you have available.