piece of awkwardness not entirely solved in the revised versions
of the 1970s and 1980s, which divides the role into Voltaire
(narrator) and Pangloss (character).^3
Into the Woodshas an author figure standing to the side of the
stage, introducing scenes, making comments, and acting for all
the world like one of the Brothers Grimm. Sondheim has a
joke up his sleeve, though. The Narrator is a deeply unwanted
person in his omniscient complacency, and when in act 2 the
Giantess demands a human sacrifice, all the other characters,
fallible as musical performers must be, slowly turn and look at
Mr. Know-It-All. To the Giantess he is thrown, and the char-
acters are now faced with the need to make their own plot.
This is a relief. Narrative infallibility has been removed, and
the remaining human characters must sing their way toward an
uncertain future. The Narrator is not quite infallible, it should
be added. When he does venture a bit of singing at the end of
act 1, he gets things wrong by announcing a “happily ever af-
ter” conclusion to the plot. The same actor normally doubles
as the Mysterious Man, a fallible character who does have a
song (“No More”). This is a complex moment. His singing de-
livers a piece of wisdom to his son, the Baker, who will as a re-
sult follow through with his commitments to the remaining
human characters—exactly what the Mysterious Man has not
done in his time. “Don’t run away” is the moral lesson learned
by the Baker, and it seems that the Mysterious Man has the
moral capacity to teach this point. But then he runs away him-
self. Perhaps he is touched with omniscience after all, this
weird father figure who flits here and there in the woods, but
he is a bumbler as well as a sage.^4
Most narrators in musicals fall well short of omniscience.
Tevye often takes a narrative position in Fiddler on the Roof
(1964), but he never acts as though he knows everything. On
the contrary, he gains humor from knowing very little and hav-
ing to speak to the Lord Himself about important turns in the
152 CHAPTER SEVEN
(^3) For a fuller account of the various revisions Candidehas received, see
Mordden, Everything’s Coming Up Roses, pp. 170–85.
(^4) A point I owe to Lindsay Wilczynski.