50 Favourite Musicals: 27: PIPPIN (1972) (Stephen Schwartz)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life:

  

First performed: 1972, Imperial Theater, NY

First seen by me: 1998, Bridewell, London

Productions seen: Three

Score: Stephen Schwartz
Book: Roger O. Hirson / Bob Fosse

Plot: A strolling band of players invite us to watch them perform their show about Pippin, the restless son of King Charlemagne.  Pippin is unloved at court with his distant father and scheming stepmother Fastrada who is pushing her clueless son to become heir.  Pippin is caught in an existential quandary - where can he find a purpose?  War, sex, revolution, the simple life...  Pippin tries them all, but The Leading Player seems to know exactly what Pippin is there for...

Five memorable numbers: MAGIC TO DO, CORNER OF THE SKY, NO TIME AT ALL, SPREAD A LITTLE SUNSHINE, KIND OF WOMAN

Stephen Schwartz had written PIPPIN in the late 1960s while at university so with the success of 1971's GODSPELL, producers asked if he had any other shows.  PIPPIN was dusted off and rewritten but the 1960s echoes through the plot - a young man's existential crisis - but it's the ghost of Bob Fosse, the original director/choreographer, that haunts subsequent productions. Fosse threw Schwartz and Hirson's concept out and gave it what is now recognized as the Fosse style - needless to say, the rehearsal period was marked with frequent spats between director and composer.  1972 was the year Fosse won the three main Director showbiz awards: Academy Award (CABARET), Emmy Award (LIZA WITH A Z) and the Tony Award for PIPPIN.  He even directed a revolutionary TV ad for PIPPIN - a whole minute of star Ben Vereen as The Leading Player and two chorus girls doing a quintessential Fosse number 'The Manson Trio' - the voice-over then announced you could see the other 119 minutes of PIPPIN at the Imperial Theater; a simple idea but it was the first theatre ad to focus on just one song; the show ran for four and a half years!  In London, it famously flopped despite Fosse recreating his production.  That slinky, sexy Fosse style has been lurking in all three productions I have seen - with directors adding their own spin on top of it, throwing concepts on it to divert attention from the skimpy-but-bizarre book.  Although amusing enough, it cannot really contain the weighty themes it raises.  The eventual collapse of the players' make-believe world which leaves Pippin and his lover Catherine facing life with no coloured lights or music feels more like it just ran out of steam - the idea was better realized in INTO THE WOODS with fairy-tale characters, having sacrificed their Narrator, suddenly faced with having to create their own ending.  I don't think I have seen a fully successful production but what always has me returning to the show is Schwartz's score - his finest - which, although sometimes at odds with the book, features some dazzling Broadway show tunes: the wonderful seductive opening number "Magic To Do", Pippin's 'I Want' number "Corner Of The Sky", Berthe's infectious, sing-a-long "No Time At All", Fastrada's dissembling "Spread A Little Sunshine", the choral loveliness of "Morning Glow", Catherine's pop-infused "Kind of Woman" and her break-up ballad "I Guess I'll Miss The Man" are enough to make me overlook any other flaws - oddly enough the 1972 cast recording was on Motown Records, which explains why Michael Jackson and The Supremes covered songs from the score.

There is plenty of video representation of PIPPIN but you cannot improve on the best... here is Ben Vereen in his Tony Award-winning role as the Leading Player seductively enticing us to enter the unsettling word of his troupe of players with MAGIC TO DO, truly one of the best opening numbers ever.  This was taken from a 1981 performance that was recorded for Canadian Television but what it does is immortalize Vereen's magnetism and Fosse's choreography, directed here by his PIPPIN dance captain Kathryn Doby who - among other Fosse credits - was one of the Kit Kat girls in his film of CABARET.