This morning, I was being what my mother would call "a pill" by playing the London Cast Album of Into the Woods just loud enough to hopefully nudge Chris into waking up before I left for work. (His current Saturday alarm is the opening number of the show, so when he silenced his alarm, I started playing it on my computer. Sometimes I wonder why he stays with me.) As I listened (and Chris pretended to be too asleep to hear), Jack's first exchange with his mother got me to thinking about him. I had overlooked Jack before because I didn't see any depth in him. He didn't really interest me...until today.
The Narrator provides the first mention of Jack in the show, describing him as a sad young lad. Jack had never seemed particularly sad to me in the productions I had seen or been a part of. His youthful exuberance was always the most noticeable trait. Why is Jack sad? What drives him to keep climbing that beanstalk, taking huge risks and violating the moral code of society by stealing from those who offered him hospitality? These actions, which are devoid of any true malice, play a huge part in the disasters that follow in Act II.
Jack is an only child. His father has seemingly abandoned him or died abroad. His mother doesn't understand him and routinely sublimates her unhappiness in life onto him, berating him for his perceived shortcomings and failure to live up to his responsibility as man of the house. He has latched onto an old, dried-out cow as the only source of friendship in his life. In other words, he is deprived of the very kinds of human connection that make people happy, a concept that resonates with and is related to an article in the Huffington Post I recently read on what really drives addiction. This is why he is a "sad young lad."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html
Is it any wonder, then, that when a giant beanstalk springs out of the ground by his home that he climbs it, hoping to find something to ease the emptiness he doesn't even know enough to name? Is it any wonder that the thrill of meeting the giantess and the chance to provide for his family keep him going back for more? Is it any wonder that he readily accepts Red Riding Hood's challenge to go back a third time to steal the harp? He has become an adrenaline junky. The emptiness of his life is filled with thrill-seeking and adventure he had never previously thought possible. He is heedless of the consequences of his actions.
Jack is the first in the show to realize the effects of going "into the woods." In the song Giants in the Sky, he relates the story of his adventures, and we are let in on the growth in his perceptions of the world, his "coming of age," if you will. The most poignant of these observations is that on his way back down the beanstalk, he sees his house and his mother and realizes he had never really seen them before. "The roof, the house and your mother at the door. The roof, the house, and a world you never thought to explore. And you think of all of the things you've seen, and you wish that you could live in between, and you're back again, only different than before...after the sky." The Baker's Wife has a similar epiphany later in the show, but that is the subject of another blog.
I was brought up to believe that we came to this world, our own version of going into the woods, partly to learn by our experience. In fact, it was the only way we could progress from our state of being in the Pre-Existence. It's through our misadventures in this world that we gain the perspective and knowledge necessary to live in another, hopefully better, one. And at the very least, our experiences can give us the strength we need to face Mrs. Giant when she comes down to give us the consequences of our choices. "There are giants in the sky" and if we want to grow, we need to go up and meet them.
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