Faerie Tale Theatre Reviews: Jack and the Beanstalk

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“When you mounted that beanstalk, you started to climb that ladder to fortune!”
– The Mysterious Old Man, reminding us that opportunities are worth the arduous climb

What’s in a name? Would that which we would call a Jack by any other name be as wily, cunning, adventurous or tricky? Perhaps, but then he wouldn’t be nearly as memorable as those who share the namesake. Funny how you find a lot of Jacks in fairy tales and nursery rhymes, isn’t it? There’s Jack Sprat, Jack Horner, Jack Be Nimble, Jack O’Lantern, and of course, Jack The Giant Killer, a distant cousin of today’s story. Thanks to the multitude of English and Appalachian tales featuring a hero with that sobriquet, naming a character Jack has become shorthand for a clever, agile, and often charming personality, a tradition in fiction which continues to this day (Jack Sparrow, Reacher, and Skellington, anyone?) Of course, it’s only natural that someone with a larger-than-life persona would have an enemy in someone who is, quite literally, larger than life.

Myths of giants and giant killers have rocked the folkloric landscape since the days of Greek and Norse mythology. The story of Jack and the Beanstalk, however, grew almost entirely out of England. Scholars have found its roots go as far back as 4500 BC, with some signs that it may have originated in early Iran. Inspired by the aforementioned Jack The Giant Killer and passed down through years of oral tradition, the story as we first know it appeared in English publications in 1734 as “The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean” (I can see why the title got whittled down). It was later popularized in 1845 by Henry Cole, the man who invented greeting cards, and again by Australian folklorist Joseph Jacobs in 1890. Jacobs’ version is the one that stuck around the longest, and is the take on Jack’s adventures that we’re all familiar with, for better or worse.

See, while all those qualities I mentioned earlier can be noble in some Jacks, they can be villainous in others, like Spring-Heeled Jack and Jack The Ripper – and even in the case of this particular Jack. Back in the salad days of Jack and the Beanstalk’s popularity, no one really questioned the morality of Jack’s actions. I suppose just being a giant (and an implied man-eating one at that) were wicked enough traits to make him the designated antagonist. When the Victorian period dictated that all children’s stories should teach morals in as hamfisted a manner as possible, Andrew Lang and Benjamin Tabart rewrote Jack and the Beanstalk so that Jack has a tragic backstory that gives him the moral high ground and makes the Giant more monstrous from the reader’s perspective. While the idea does have merit, I’m left wondering if two wrongs really do make a right. Does stealing from someone and eventually murdering them negate your culpability if the victim committed those same crimes against you first? What if your retribution left behind a widow with no one to support her? Does that still make you a hero, or leave you in the need of some good PR? I suppose that’s why I lean towards versions where Jack realizes his greed is making him as much a monster as the giant, or where the consequences of his actions catch up to him and he must take responsibility in order to set things right (hi, Into The Woods). I definitely don’t expect Faerie Tale Theatre’s to delve into such a moral gray area, but how do they handle making this Jack a hero worth rooting for?

Fourth Anniversary Review: March of the Wooden Soldiers/Babes in Toyland (1934)

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We all have our good years and our bad years that we can recall. For me, 2013 was not a very good year. To make a long story short, everything from February onward culminated in a deep depression that lasted through most of the fall. What helped me out of it? Well, Team Starkid released what is to date their best show, Twisted, for starters. But that same Thanksgiving weekend Twisted premiered online, I rediscovered a piece of my childhood almost untouched by time. A movie that, despite its age and subject, wore down the walls of cynicism, made me forget the troubles of the outside world for 75 minutes, and had me smiling genuinely for the first time in months.

That movie is what I’ll be reviewing today.

Babes in Toyland began life as an operetta/pantomime by Victor Herbert in 1903, and you’ll never find a straight adaptation or production of the original libretto put on today. Why?

There’s gruesome murders, convoluted schemes, love octagons, too many characters to keep track of, needlessly dark subplots, and I’m not even touching the random fantasy elements thrown in. If you want some idea of what the story is supposed to be, then by all means read Jay Davis’ Babes in Toyland retrospective (coincidentally written in 2013). Despite this, the show was tremendously popular and led to many theatrical reimaginings of magical family-friendly stories like The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan. In the former’s case, it was those stage adaptations that paved the way for the classic 1939 movie. But because Babes in Toyland was first and foremost a musical, a film adaptation had to wait until silent pictures became talkies. And when it did come to the big screen, it took a turn that few expected.

Enter Hal Roach, famed producer of comedy vehicles for stars of the 20s and 30s such as Will Rogers, Thelma Todd, the Little Rascals, and of course, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Once movie rights for Babes in Toyland were made available, Roach saw the comic potential for Laurel and Hardy and snagged ’em. His initial treatment didn’t impress Stan Laurel much, though. Few know that Laurel took his craft very seriously and was prone to rewriting scripts to milk as many laughs from it as possible. While this might sound like the workings of a control freak prima donna, he actually knew what he was doing. This Babes in Toyland, later re-titled March of the Wooden Soldiers to differentiate it from the others, is full of entertaining comic setpieces, lines, and characters, and has a tight plot that ties them all together. It is very much Stan Laurel’s movie more than it is Hal Roach’s.

And in hindsight, we have him to thank for the grand tradition of rewriting Babes in Toyland so it’s almost nothing like the operetta and no two versions are the same. That’s something I’m also grateful for.

But perhaps the greatest contribution Laurel might have made to March of the Wooden Soldiers is how naturally he and Hardy step into the role of main character. See, the leads in all the other takes on Babes in Toyland are love interests usually named Tom and Mary, and they are so mind-numbingly boring. If Angelina Jolie and Halle Berry hooked up with Kevin Costner and Robert Pattinson, their non-existent chemistry wouldn’t be half as dull as the parade of Toms and Marys doing nothing but pining for each other. They take time away from the characters who have real personalities and make those other Babes in Toyland far less interesting or fun to watch.

March of the Wooden Soldiers, on the other hand, does something radical when it comes to naming its leads – it takes the funny side cast we want to see more of and makes them the focus while putting the traditional romantic protagonists in the background. Normally handing over the spotlight to the comic relief characters is a bad idea (COUGHMINIONSCOUGH). But when those side characters-turned-leads are played by the most iconic comedic duo of all time, well, let’s just say we’re in good hands.