“I’ll get you my pretty!” Wait, no. “Double, double toil and trouble!” No, wait. I’ve actually never seen any performances of Stephen Sondheim’s classic fairy tale musical Into the Woods, so I’m not sure what the witch is famous for saying. But I do know which famous face will be saying those words, as the first official still from Rob Marshall’s upcoming adaptation has been released, and it shows Meryl Streep at her most wicked. Click the image to see it full size!
Actually, it’s mostly her fingernails that are looking truly grizzled, as well as multi-jointed. As far as witch costumes go, I’m kind of disappointed here. I mean, there’s a good chance she’s some kind of a shapeshifter, and she’ll get a little more gruesome looking, but she really just looks like someone in an Into the Woods Halloween costume here. I was expecting to see a little more facial changes. I wonder if we’ll see a still of Johnny Depp’s Wolf soon where he’s just got a bearskin rug thrown over his back.
Sure, I’m being asinine, but only because movies are the places where people can literally look like anything. I’ll just have to assume that Streep is in transformation mode and that she'll look more ghastly in the images to come. But how does she stack against the witches of yesteryear? Perhaps that’s the more important question.
First we have the first to take the role of the witch in the stage version of Into The Woods, and the most revered of the bunch: actress Bernadette Peters. This is a stereotypical take on how a witch looks, but it works. Look at those fingers!
Then there’s Vanessa Williams, who took on the role for the 2002 revival. She looks more like an African medicine man than a witch in this particular picture, but it’s all about having power.
And from New York’s Public Theater’s 50th anniversary of Shakespeare in the Park in 2012, Donna Murphy took the dastardly role, and she looks pretty amazing doing it.
And finally, here’s a shot of Angela Robinson from a 2011 performance in Atlanta, and I like this one most of all.
treep definitely has the aesthetic down, but she still looks like a beautiful woman up there. Show me the skills where she’s warts and all.
Into the Woods also stars Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick, James Corden, Chris Pine, Lilla Crawford, Tracy Ullman, Christine Baranski and Daniel Huttlestone. It is currently set to arrive in theaters on December 25, 2014.
