Note: I have been trying to stock up on blog posts in advance so I can keep my daily streak (currently at 518 days) going, while I work on a longer series of posts that require a bit more effort than my daily posts normally do. Hence, I might be writing about the same subject for several days in a row a bit more frequently, or publishing posts that are little more than a picture or two..

A couple weeks ago I came across the “Giants in the Sky” podcast, which is taking a deep dive into the Sondheim and Lapine musical Into the Woods, which is also what stimulated my recent interest in the show and why I watched it again the other evening.

The podcast began publishing less than a year ago and already has over 50 episodes, each one devoted to interviews with one or more people who had been involved with the show in one way or another.

I’ve been skipping around and found several episodes that I can recommend without hesitation, though nearly every one that I’ve listened to has something to recommend it. The host Ben Rimalower is trying to do in a podcast format what James Lapine did with his book a couple years ago on the making of Sunday in the Park with George.

The link that I’m providing is to the Broadway Podcast Network, which hosts the podcast, and all the episodes can be found there, but you should also be able to find it by going into your favorite podcast app and searching on “Giants in the Sky”.

Anyway, if you just pick and choose episodes, I heartily recommend listening to episode #13 – Kim Crosby & Robert Westenberg, the Original Cinderella and Cinderella’s Prince/The Wolf. Kim and Robert met each other on the set, fell in love, and got married and are still together 35 years later, but that’s not the only reason why this episode is so good. Listen to it for the hilarious, and PG-rated, story of the problems they had with the Wolf’s costume.

Then there’s episode #5 – Joanna Gleason, the Original Baker’s Wife. She’s just fascinating to listen to, and she has a much better memory for things than James Lapine does. By the way, you can skip the Lapine episode; he doesn’t recall anything.

Same with episode #2 – Chip Zien, the Original Baker. His name is pronounced like Zion, by the way. I’ve been mispronouncing it all these years. His memory is great as well.

Of course you’ll want #50 – Bernadette Peters, the Original Witch. What more need I say?

And then there’s #51 – Maureen Davis, the Original Sleeping Beauty and Stunt Witch. The show had the same Magic Coordinator (or whatever his title was) that Doug Henning’s Magic Show had, and Maureen goes into great detail as to how the magical transformation of the ugly Witch to the beautiful Witch was managed. Because of the danger she faced dealing with the trap door, she received hazard pay. She was also sworn to secrecy during the run of the show not to reveal how the switch was done or even that she was the stunt Witch.

Last but hardly least is #52 – Robert Sean Leonard, Jack in the Playwrights Horizons Workshop. You might remember him from playing Dr. James Wilson, the long suffering best and only friend of Dr. Gregory House on the TV show House. He was the original Jack in the first workshop of the show when he was a mere lad of 15, but he has some interesting insights to offer.

These are not the only ones worth listening to, of course, and I still have many that I haven’t sampled yet, but I know things now, many valuable things, that I hadn’t known before…