In 2017, I discovered a musical podcast called 36 Questions. It was like a revelation. Listening to cast recordings of Broadway musicals was, in a way, like listening to a narrative podcast. Through songs, we listen to the stories being told, no visuals necessary. 36 Questions, performed by Jonathan Groff (Hamilton, Spring Awakening) and Jessie Shelton (Hadestown, Waitress) with music and lyrics by Chris Littler and Ellen Winter, stuck in my mind and would spark a new movement of musical podcasts. Or so I thought. It made sense, did not need the production that a traditional musical would need, and it would reach a wider audience like me, who cannot afford to travel across the world just to see the latest musical.
Fast-forward to 2020, and I hadn’t really heard of any other musical podcasts, at least not one that organically reached my ears quite like 36 Questions did. After some research, I found this article and little else. Maybe I was too optimistic back then, but there was no wave of musical podcasts. That might change after people are forced to create from home because of the pandemic. That article, however, did point me to an upcoming podcast titled In Strange Woods.
Featuring cast members like Beth Leavel and Patrick Page, it had a mysterious premise and a promising cast. The first episode was released on December 14, 2020. The summary from In Strange Woods’ Audioboom page is as follows:
A new podcast musical from the producer of The Bright Sessions and creators Jeff Luppino-Esposito, Brett Ryback, and Matt Sav. After a tragedy in the Whitetail National Forest, 18-year-old Peregrine Wells seeks out survivalist skills from an enigmatic old recluse. In this fictional documentary musical with an original folk-pop score, listeners will follow producer Brett Ryback as he explores themes of grief, adolescence, and our precarious relationship to the wilderness — all set against a sleepy northern Minnesota town reeling from a loss of innocence it will never get back. In Strange Woods is a production of Atypical Artists. It is created and executive produced by Jeff Luppino-Esposito, Brett Ryback, and Matt Sav.
The story sets itself as a mystery podcast, where the character Brett Ryback entered the world of a “sleepy northern Minnesota town” and discovered that things aren’t exactly what they seem. One of their songs has the lyrics “we only knew what we knew”, implying there is an unknown to be discovered.
Episode 1–3 sets up the scene, who the people are and aren’t, and episode 4 was where it all came together. Hoo boy, episode 4. When I was listening to it, I refused to do anything else other than listening to it. By the end of it, I realized I hadn’t had lunch yet and my hands were shaking from hunger. The slow reveal, the building climax, and the wonderful performance of Beth Leavel’s Sandra were just… mind-blowing. I won’t forget that performance any time soon.
But, and a bit of a spoiler alert here, the last episode was, in comparison, disappointing. The reveal that Howl was not actually a crazy man that was about to kill a bunch of teenagers in the woods to prove a point was understandable but did not live up to the mystery. The actual twist, though, was so baffling and out of nowhere that I questioned why they did it in the first place. On an epilogue of sorts, it was revealed that Brett was not just some random producer that moved to middle-of-nowhere Montana to make a story. He’s actually the great-nephew of Howl’s lover and because of that, he had inherited the cabin that Howl inherited from her after Howl was lost in the storm.
As Wall Street Journal puts it, I love the ambition of it. The audio production was great and the acting was pretty much on point, but I’m still stuck on the story. In a sense, I feel duped. There’s no big mystery or big twist. Or, well, there was, but the ending was not satisfying.
I do have to say that it does fit one of the themes that the story is trying to tell. The world isn’t always how you want it to be. Nature doesn’t care about the folly of man. Sometimes things are as simple as they actually are and humans try to convolute the story to fit their own narratives.
In Strange Woods have some flaws. For instance, I don’t think every single scripted narrative podcast needs to have an in-universe reason that this was recorded. Radio drama was a thing and producers and writers need to trust their audience more. We don’t ask why the camera is recording every single moment of this person’s life when we watch a movie and we certainly won’t ask why this adventure was recorded.
There are 15 names listed in the cast members. There are times when 5–6 people are in a scene, talking right after each other. It’s difficult to discern who is who when we haven’t had much time to recognize the voices of each character. I still don’t know the names of most of these people without having to look up the names. Except for Howl, these people don’t have very distinctive voices. Again, I think this is why episode 4 was so dang good. It’s just Brett and Sandra talking and singing.
In Strange Woods is an ambitious storytelling effort that speaks of grief and loss. It’s an especially poignant story for me after I lost my dad last year. Give it a listen. It’s at the very least, a good story to follow along as we ponder on our own grief and loss.
