Diane Paulus, center, directs the Broadway revival of Pippinleft, Patina Miller as Lead Playerright, Matthew James Thomas as PippinPhotograph: Kevin H. Lin
Broadway is abuzz and atwitter with the arrival of Pippin back on The Great White Way after an absence of over 30 years. The first NYC audience to experience this re-imagined production could not contain themselves on Saturday at the initial preview performance. Previews will continue until the official Opening Performance on April 25.
I received a call last evening from one of the cast members who has become a friend. According to him, this is what transpired on Saturday night:
"The audience stopped the show twice in the first Act with
standing ovations. The first time was after the opening number, 'Magic
To Do,'. Cast and audience members were in tears. The second time was
after Andrea Martin sang 'Just No Time At All.'"
I do not recall ever attending a Broadway show in which the show was stopped twice in the first Act for the audience to acknowledge their delight. Something similar happened during Pippin's first performance at the A.R.T. After hearing the familiar opening chords of the orchestra's brief prelude, the audience spontaneously break into a round of applause. It felt that, as one, we were all saying to the show, to Stephen Schwartz, to Pippin: "You have been away too long, friend; we have missed you. Welcome back!"
In today's online edition of Timeout New York, Rob Weinert-Kendt has written a wonderful article about how Director Diane Paulus has developed her vision for this production of Pippin.
Diane Paulus brings her
magic to Pippin
The innovative director
behind Hair and Porgy and Bess infuses the Broadway classic with circus
thrills.
by Rob Weinert-Kendt
You’d think Assassins would
hold the distinction of being the first Broadway tuner with a number inspired
by Charles Manson. That honor goes to the epic 1972 pop musical Pippin, whose first Broadway revival, now in
previews, opens April 25. Its lavish ode to war, “Glory,” climaxes with a
gruesome battle tableau, accompanied by a sinuous, wordless soft-shoe by the
show’s hat-and-cane-wielding MC, the Leading Player, and two chorines in
boaters and breastplates. For reasons that may have been clearer to audiences
at the time, this unmistakable bit of Fossean irony has always been called “the
Manson Trio.” (Bob Fosse was the show’s original director and, in many ways, a
coauthor with songwriter Stephen
Schwartz and
playwright Roger O. Hirson.)
Maybe it wasn’t so clear to
1970s theatergoers, actually. Although she saw the original production three
times as a kid, Pippin director
Diane Paulus (Hair, Porgy and Bess) admits
that she never got the Manson reference. She finally asked Chet Walker, an
original cast member now serving as the revival’s choreographer, about the
curious name of the iconic jazz-hands interlude.
“I asked him, ‘Why’s it called the Manson Trio?’ ” Paulus
recalls. “He said, ‘Because Bob was very interested in Charles Manson.’ It was
the idea of the Leading Player as a kind of charismatic leader, kind of a cult
leader. That’s a particularly dark way to see it, but it was really
illuminating to understand that reference had significance for Fosse: the
juxtaposition of song-and-dance and people being killed.”
If the ghost of the late
director-choreographer hovers, Cheshire cat–like, over Pippin, Paulus was
determined to face it head-on. “When I talked to Stephen Schwartz, I told him
that I wanted to deal with ‘the Fosse,’ because his influence is inextricably
linked to the memory of this show,” says Paulus, who originated the current
revival at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where
she is artistic director. “I knew it was not my strength to re-create a museum
replica of a production, so my interest was: How do I make this production feel
necessary? Why bring it back?”
In addition to enlisting Walker
to preserve some of the Fosse moves, Paulus brought on Gypsy Snider, a founding
member of Les 7 Doigts de la Main, the Canadian circus company behindTraces, to give
the show a new layer of movement—and danger.
“I was totally turned on by 7
Doigts; it’s acrobatics, but actor-driven, human-scaled, very emotion-based
acrobatics,” Paulus raves with the signature enthusiasm that surely helped land
her a gig directing a tent show for Cirque du Soleil (Amaluna, now in
Seattle and slated for Randalls Island in 2014). She’d been looking for an
excuse to work with 7 Doigts when Walker happened to mention another Fosse
obsession. “He said, ‘You know, Bob was fascinated with circus,’ ” says Paulus.
“ ‘He loved Fellini, and taking this show to a world of circus feels very
natural.’ Circus is almost in Pippin’s DNA.”
The musical may not have three rings, exactly, but its main
story—about the peripatetic coming-of-age of the title character, the son and
heir of Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne—is framed as a show-within-a-show,
performed by a troupe of traveling players. Adding acrobats to the mix was easy
enough, but they bring more than cheap thrills.
“What I love about circus is that it’s all a metaphor: Walking a
tightwire is a physical metaphor,” says Paulus. The physical part is the key,
she adds: “In theater, I always say you live in the moments where things don’t
go according to plan, because then all of a sudden everybody wakes up and says,
‘Wait a minute, this is live theater!’ In the circus, that’s always happening.
When we execute some of the moves in this show, it is real, real, real. And the
audience is there, living and breathing with them.”
Though she doesn’t plan to
literally invite the audience onstage, as she did in her 2009 revival of Hair, Paulus
says that in Pippin, “your
presence is highlighted: We’ve made an effort to show that you’re in the world
of the show.” Summing up what could be both her ethic and her aesthetic, Paulus
adds, “I guess I’m a junkie for visceral theatrical experiences, you know?”
Pippin is in previews at the Music Box Theatre. Click here for tickets.
Enjoy!
Al
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