It's an exciting time to be a Stephen Sondheim fan, as both Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park with George are set to be revived on the London stage.
Both of these works are the result of a creative partnership between Sondheim and James Lapine, with the former writing the music and lyrics and the latter writing the book in both cases.
Speaking on a panel at the press launch for the West End transfer of Into the Woods, Lapine reflected on working with the legendary composer and how the original idea for Into the Woods came about.
While Into the Woods is now regarded as a key part of the musical theatre canon, Lapine revealed that things could have taken a very different path: "Before we did Sunday, he was coming off Merrily We Roll Along, which at the time was a big flop, but of course has now turned into a big hit.
"But he was deciding he was going to do video games instead of writing musicals. Fortunately, that never worked out!"
Fortunately, indeed. Since its premiere in 1986, Into the Woods has become one of the most beloved musicals to take to the stage, praised for its challenging score and intricate plot.
Lapine revealed that the original idea for Into the Woods came from the combination of a TV pilot he was writing and his passion for Jungian psychology: "We were just knocking around ideas, and we started talking about fairy tales because that was something that interested me. I was very interested in Jungian studies.
"Steve said, 'Well, the only thing I know about fairy tales are the Disney cartoons.' And I said, 'Well, we've never read the Brothers Grimm or Perrault,' so I started to write an original fairy tale.
"I started talking about this other idea I had about doing a TV special where I brought the characters that I had watched as a kid and brought them all back together and weaved together an episode. I had this idea of bringing all these characters together, but it spun into this idea of writing a fairy tale."
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Lapine also provided some insight into the practicalities of working with Sondheim, notably his love of tackling a challenge.
Speaking about the process behind the famous opening number, he said: "I wrote all these characters in that first opening scene, and I said to him, 'There's no way you can write an opening number to this,' which, of course, is the only way to get Stephen Sondheim to actually work. If you tell him there's something he can't do, he's going to do it."
Sondheim was also notorious for continually tweaking his work, which Lapine described as: "Steve never finished his work. We went and we worked on it out in San Diego, and then brought it in, but he still was working on it all the way until it opened in New York."
View oEmbed on the source websiteSpeaking about this latest production of Into the Woods, which began at the Bridge Theatre and is transferring to the Noël Coward Theatre, Lapine went so far as to say: "I think it's the best production I've ever seen, and I include my own.
"The woods became such a real character in ways that I've never seen before. I came to see it for a preview and I was going to go back to New York, but I stayed two more days to see it again."
Speaking about opening night of Into the Woods at the Bridge Theatre in 2025, Lapine said: "I'm a very cold, heartless person and I remember, after seeing the opening night, crying; partially because I miss Steve Sondheim so much, but also it brought so much of Steve Sondheim back to me and back to the world. I'm just thrilled with this production."
Into the Woods is running at the Noël Coward Theatre from 22 September 2026 until 9 Jan 2027.
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