(no subject)

[skygiants]

I've seen two musicals recently! The first was Love's Labour's Lost at Shakespeare in the Park, and it was . . . not good. I mean, Love's Labour's Lost is not really the greatest play anyway - it has too many subplots and the main romance plots are deeply silly and have no emotional impact. This is a thing that you could really improve on in a musical version, if you wanted to. Instead, Love's Labour's Lost takes extra time and depth away from all of its lead characters, plays up the frat-boy aspects without resolving them or making them in any way sympathetic, and throws in valuable bonus features like Random Guy Who Sings A Love Song About Wanting To Eat Cats.

But enough on this, because the other show I saw last week was the recent revival of Pippin and it was AMAZING.

For those of you unfamiliar: Pippin is at least nominally about the adventures of Prince Pippin, son of Charlemagne, as he attempts to flail his way towards a life that is "completely fulfilling."

That is the show-within-a-show. The real show of Pippin is sort of about that, but it's also about performance, and the lure of spectacle -- the self-destructive seduction of the larger-than-life. So the fact that it is staged as a full-color circus filled with acrobats performing humanly impossible feats and choreography that fuses Fosse with Cirque du Soleil is, basically, perfect. (Also perfect is the fact that the actor playing Pippin can in no way keep up with the acrobatics. There's one hilarious moment during one of the songs where a couple of the acrobats are performing a balancing act and invite Pippin up to echo them; Pippin takes a step, hesitates, announces "NOPE!" and bops right back on down. EXACTLY AS IT SHOULD BE.)

Pippin aside, the real lead role in Pippin is the part of the Leading Player - narrator, director, ringmaster - and we can pause here for a moment of appreciation for Patina Miller's everything:



I should mention, by the way, for those who have not heard this story before, that my last experience with Pippin was our middle-school production. This was hilarious in ways that are

So the ending for Pippin features the Leading Player and troupe setting Pippin up for his grand finale after trying and failing to find fulfillment anywhere else -- a perfectly spectacular and suicidal leap into a giant bonfire. (Pippin thinks about it, then NOPES right on out of there and back to ordinary life with the ordinary girlfriend he'd earlier ditched in the search for something more extraordinary.)

Obviously, we could not have one middle schooler exhorting another to "think about the sun" and telling them to jump into a giant bonfire. That would be a bad example for the children!

So instead we had a giant cardboard box, into which Pippin was supposed to step. The Leading Player sang, "Think about the box, Pippin!" The box represented the unknown.

. . . so what I mean to say is that it was a pleasantly novel experience to see some actual fire! And I was actually surprised by the new ending, in which Pippin's girlfriend's son lingers behind, drawn by the glamor and the lights, and starts the cycle right back on up again. I like it! It's creepier, and I always think Pippin should be as creepy as possible.

I feel like I've already talked a lot about this (it's just so novel for me to actually go see a GOOD musical, rather than one that's lolariously bad!) but a few last points:
- I had forgotten how good the Pippin score is -- not that the songs are so absolutely great in and of themselves, many of them are just kind of cheery 70s pop ballads, but context makes all of them so ironic! IT'S AWESOME
- it took me ages to recognize Terrence Mann as Charlemagne, aka Original Javert and Original Chauvelin, but once I did it was kind of hilarious to watch him get murdered by a bright-eyed revolutionary shouting about tyranny

Comments

[percysowner]

I have a love for Pippin. A couple of years ago I was volunteering for a community theater and I ran the spotlights on Pippin. I fell in love with the score, which, as you say, the context makes them even better. When I was working the play, I did look up the history of the show. There have been two endings for it the play for a while and community theaters use them both depending on who they are serving. The play I did the lights on had the "trapped but happy" ending, not the Theo is pulled towards the players ending. The fun thing was that in our production the players ask the audience to join them, we had kids very often run up to the stage (it's not a huge theater and does have steps into the audience) to go with the players. The actors would take the kids, swoop them away and then wait in the hallway for the parents to come get their kid back.

The best part of the revival doing well is that there is going to be a national tour starting in September. I live near Cleveland about 30 minutes from the largest theater complex in the United States, second only to Lincoln Center in New York City, so the tour should get here eventually. I really want to see a professional production.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I think the Theo ending is about ten years old now? e definitely did not use it in ours (and it's definitely not in the original Ben Vereen production either, which I have also seen but also a long, long time ago. Yours sounds like a really cool ending, though, and a really fun production to be involved in! I hope you get to see it when it tours. :)

[adiva_calandia]

Man, I actually only have a glancing knowledge of Pippin, but this production sounds -- and looked, at the Tonys -- SO GREAT. I have such a fondness for any play that includes a meta Player character (see also R&G Are Dead).

Obligatory "CMU REPRESENT" fistpump for Patina Miller!

[skygiants]

A part of me is deeply tempted to ask for creepy meta Pippin fic for Yuletide - possibly even creepy crossover meta Pippin fic, because R&G is basically a perfect crossover, man -- except that I have a hard time imagining how it could possibly turn out well. But so fascinating!

[ladymondegreen]

I totally second this.

Also, I have never heard of the alternate ending to Pippin, but it makes so much sense. Particularly since Pippin is finally willing to accept an ordinary life.

[skygiants]

Yep - and the cycle still has to keep going! THERE'S ALWAYS ANOTHER UNSATISFIED KID.

It's funny, because throughout the whole performance I was like "huh, this Theo looks a bit older than I would imagine," and then we got to the end and it was like OHHHHH THAT'S WHY.

[ellen_fremedon]

Ooh, I saw Pippin back in May! It was amazing.

[skygiants]

SO MUCH VISUAL STIMULATION of the best possible kind *___*

[ceitfianna]

My only knowledge of Pippin other than the Tonys was watching on T the version that starred Ben Vereen. When I watched it I was too young to understand it, but this makes me want to go explore it once more. I love musical meta.

[skygiants]

I totally want to rewatch the Ben Vereen version now - my mom really loves that version, so I've seen most of the performances, but the last was a long time ago

[katta]

I've never seen Pippin and knew very little about it, but your post made me very intrigued! I searched out this youtube clip which looks fairly amazing. If there's ever a production in my vicinity, I'll want to see it for sure!

[skygiants]

See if you can find the old 1970s TV version, too! I think most of it is on YouTube, and it's pretty spectacular. Ben Vereen is an AMAZING Player King.

[twtd]

That .gif. . . Guh. *runs off to youtube*

[skygiants]

I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE MOVES THE WAY SHE MOVES.

[ladymondegreen]

Also, "Think about the box" almost made me fall over laughing.

I was in a musical LARP a few years ago that included Pippin, and we did have a last minute substitute for Pippin from another plotline, that led to a Burning Man-like finale.

[skygiants]

It was a QUALITY performance. (Though some of that staging that we did stuck with me -- I liked that we had a male/female couple as Lead Players, for example, even though it's almost certainly to give more kids roles.)

. . . that sounds kind of hilarious. Who was it who burned up?

[ladymondegreen]

It was the Witch from Into the Woods as a sort-of sacrifice/redemption moment.

[buymeaclue]

Pippin was my first fandom. Only in my head, but still. Trufax.

[skygiants]

Wait, what, how! Details!

[buymeaclue]

Oh, it wasn't very interesting -- I was after all about twelve! I just saw the musical as performed by our local high school and immediately started amusing myself with riffs and added characters and and and. SLIPPERY SLOPE FROM THERE.