I can’t remember the last time a Broadway musical tour provided as much bang for audience bucks as Pippin. Under director Diane Paulus, choreographer Chet Walker and circus creator Gypsy Snider, this production is a rich stew of pure spectacle theater utilizing song, dance, puppetry, circus arts, low-grade magic tricks, audience sing-along and shadow play to pump blood into this fraught tale of a young man in search of himself, under the shadow of a powerful father. It certainly makes for a great show, especially with a cast as vocally powerful as it is handsome and athletic … absolutely no weak link. It’s a nifty casting trick, too, to have the original 1972 Pippin—John Rubenstein—now playing the father, the great medieval king Charlemagne.
The only difficulty is the one left over from the original production 43 years ago: Pippin has little heart and no soul. If you feel two minutes of emotion in the course of two hours, you may consider yourself a sensitive person. I’m saying emotion, not excitement (of which there is plenty). The title character does nothing heroic and is empathetic only due to the considerable charm, good looks and talent of the performer, Sam Lips, whom many WCT readers will want to gobble up.
The original Pippin was directed and choreographed by the great-but-cynical Bob Fosse, who imposed his ideas roughshod on the book and score to the despair and frustration of collaborators Roger O. Hirson and a very young Stephen Schwartz. The show never had a satisfying ending and still doesn’t despite several revisions. Act II increasingly ignores that Pippin is a prince and closes by offering him fulfillment through either suicide or a retreat into down-on-the-farm ordinariness, which Fosse didn’t believe for a nanosecond. Fosse used a grab bag of stylistic and story elements—from Peer Gynt to Monty Python—to create a show-within-a-show of pure razzle-dazzle, and so Pippin remains. People forget it wasn’t a success at first and became a hit via the first-ever TV commercial for a Broadway show, a gamble by a desperate producer.
Nonetheless, this production is a triumph of style and talent. Sasha Allen brings great pipes and leggy attitude to the Leading Player. Sabrina Harper, as scheming Queen Fastrada, is a buxom femme fatale with comic chops. Kristine Reese, as Catherine, has a lovely voice and is the show’s only truly sympathetic character. As Pippin’s grandmother, Berthe, veteran Adrienne Barbeau—still with a figure to be envied—stops the show with “No Time At All,” performed in part on a trapeze! Kudos, too, to the specialist circus artists who are well-integrated into the production. There’s also a good orchestra (with some real strings!) under conductor Ryan Cantwell.