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.

New York New York: Day 3

After breakfast we went to Museum Of Modern Art which was bleedin' shut! We wandered down 5th Avenue trying to find HMV but it looks like it has closed - how did THAT happen? At a bit of loss we wandered into Rockefeller Plaza and noticed huge posters for the "Top Of The Rock" observatory deck. 

I had wanted to go into the Rockefeller Building to see where Diego Rivera's mural was so we went in and sure enough, we found it was the opening day of the deck! That was probably why the staff were hugely chatty & helpful but it was exciting to be there on it's opening day and it wasn't at all busy.

After the fab ascent in a glass-topped lift up the 70 floors - the lift shaft is lit up with bright colours and a film is projected on the roof as you zoom upwards - we stepped out onto the lower of it's three levels and we both were fairly gobsmacked at the amazing views the large window-enclosed terraces provide.

Great views of both uptown and downtown - and this time you get the Empire State Building in your photographs! We had to share the top level with tv crews queueing up to use Central Park as their backdrops in pieces to camera - Tim Vincent yet! - but it was a wonderful way to spend a morning!

After dinner at the Italian restaurant next door to the hotel, we went to see our first show WICKED at the Gershwin Theatre. Stephen Schwartz's score has one too many self-motivating songs likely to be covered by Celine Dion or American Idol contestants and the show seemed curiously empty despite it's bombastic score and special effects.

However the two leads - although similar in voice - gave it their all and there was scene-stealing support from Rue McLanahan as the scheming Madame Morrible and Ben Vereen as The Wizard. It was great to see Vereen finally on stage, a Fosse star from PIPPIN and ALL THAT JAZZ and 'Chicken George' in tv's "Roots".

The audience too were quite bizarre: the first act closer found them screaming and yelling, and their reaction at the curtain calls was like the second coming, or first going.