"On the Steps of the Palace" is Cinderella's signature song from the first act of the Sondheim/James Lapine fairy tale musical INTO THE WOODS.
The Set Up: Cinderella walks around stage singing about how she doesn't know what to do about the Prince, which would seem like not a terribly great choice to write about in terms of storytelling, because it is literally the definition of Telling vs. Showing, and yet it's one of the best songs in the show. How does Sondheim do it?
The Performance: Everything about the film version of INTO THE WOODS is inferior to the theatrical version, except for this song sung by Anna Kendrick, which is staged in a way that I wish every future performance of the show would copy.
The Storytelling:
1) Weave Exposition into Action
The big change that the film version makes to the original staging is that it sets the song not after Cinderella has already left her shoe on the steps, but in the actual moment of that decision, with the Prince literally just steps behind her.
The effect of that is to put Cinderella into a situation of urgency. She's in a freeze frame sort of moment, yes, but for how long? She must make a choice, and she must do it right now.
The problem with information dump moments is they tend to kill the forward momentum of a story. By putting Cindy's big question in the present tense, and giving her an onscreen ticking clock in the form of Chris Pine's very handsome stockinged gams, we avoid that problem, entirely. She's not telling us something. She's struggling with something.
2) Let Your Words Sparkle
Musicals live and die on word choice. Alliteration, rhyme scheme, word play--these are essential qualities of most good songs for the stage. And also, these are things that if you do them in your film or TV script, they will stand out, and oftentimes not in a good way.
In a way it's the writing equivalent of the difference between acting for stage and screen. On stage, you have to make your performance big so that it reaches even to the people in the back row. But onscreen just a glance can often be enough to convey a ton of emotions. And big dramatic facial expressions look ridiculous.
I'm a believer in alliteration in pretty much any circumstance, but in general when you're writing for the camera if you use too much word play you'll take the audience out of that blessed moment of escape and transportation you've made for them.
But having said that, Sondheim's wordplay in "Steps" does highlight the power to be found in the right word. I watched a bunch of different versions of this scene before choosing the film version, and in every one, the audience laughs when Cinderella says the word "goo". In part it's a very satisfying play on the rhyme Sondheim has going at that moment. But it's also just a wonderfully specific word. It paints the picture.
Earlier in the song she talks about "prying up her shoes". Prying, again, is a strong word, one that gives a more detailed image of her action than say, "pulled" or "grabbed".
When you dig for the right words, or the right rhythm of words, you create opportunities for little moments of surprise and delight in the audience. And much as I was saying about "I'm Still Here", the craftsmanship of a well written line is itself a gift that an audience will relish.
My one serious reservation about the film version of this song, in fact, is that it alters one of Sondheim's most satisfying lines to hear sung: "But then what if he knew who you were when you know that you're not what he thinks that he wants."
It doesn't do it justice to write it out. Here it is performed by Kim Crosby from the original Broadway show. The moment in question occurs at about 43 seconds.
3) Make the Ending Unexpected and Inevitably
The best endings often have two seemingly contradictory qualities: You don't see them coming, but also in retrospect you can't imagine them having played out any other way. It's hard to to pull off, but when you do to my mind it's maybe the most satisfying storytelling magic trick of all.
And Sondheim does a brilliant job of it here. After two and a half minutes of Cindy telling us she just can't decide between letting herself be caught by the Prince and fleeing to her sad but predicable life, we may not know what she's going to decide, but we know what her two options are.
To suddenly at the end introduce a third possibility is completely unexpected. It's what every comedian aims at--to train us to look or think in one way, so that we won't see them coming from another direction in the punchline.
And yet the fact that Cindy's third option is the very thing she's been doing in front of us all along also makes it in retrospect the definition of inevitable. Over the course of the song she's shown no sign of starting to lean one way or another. Given that, the only legitimate option for her character is not to decide.
