If I can make one rec for your family's consumption during all this that you certainly don't have to follow:
Today is the 90th birthday of Stephen Sondheim, and a 90 year old smoker probably doesn't have much time left. More than any movie director or songwriter, more than any artist or writer or traditional composer, he's our Shakespeare, our Mozart, our Tolstoy. Long after we're all forgotten, he'll still have things to offer for generations whose conditions we can't possibly yet conceive. Maybe even more than The Simpsons.....
Into the Woods is a work about Fairy Tales, what is true about them and what are lies, and what is inevitable about telling them. It is both as light as air and as dark and disturbing a tale as the world has. It is appropriate for anyone old enough to understand the concepts it speaks of, but it is in no way a casual experience that the fairy-tale premise seems to promise. But most importantly, it tells children and parents both what they need to know in order to make meaningful lives in the face of all the world's tragedy. It is his greatest work, and perhaps our greatest work: the greatest work of art ever brought into being by any American in any form. The second act has been playing in my head non-stop all week, it saw everything that may soon be coming. It shows how we got ourselves into this mess, and it shows the way out.
Nothing will change by your watching it, but you might find what may come just a little bit easier to bear.
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