Pippin

[newyorkuniq]

Posted: 7/9/04 at 9:21pm

I know the music to Pippin but have never had a chance to see it performed. What is it about? Is it a good show?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 7/9/04 at 9:30pm

It's a favorite of many. The original Fosse production was his biggest hit. Check the link for more info:
http://www.musicalschwartz.com/pippin.htm#overview

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 7/9/04 at 9:31pm

It is a favorite of mine I can tell you that.

"Magic To Do" is like "It's A Small World" though.. it will stcik in your head for DAYS

[sean martin]

Posted: 7/9/04 at 9:33pm

Depends on the director. As it stands, it's pretty simplistic and basic: a boy disgusted by his life tries to change it to make it more meaningful, and everything he does turns to disaster. Along the way he's accompanied by a troup of players who act out the various roads his life travels: war, politics, having a family, and so on.

Fosse's original production was truly breathtaking, taking pretty mundane material and making it glorious -- there's a performance captured in Australia on DVD that is a decent copy of the original. The score is really pretty good, but the book has its problems.

[directorkid]

Posted: 7/9/04 at 10:13pm

how amazing would it be if John Tartaglia played Pippin in the World AIDS Day concert??

[BroadwayBound06]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 12:06am

they cut out alot of Fosse's additions to the book in the Australian production.

[BWayBoy88]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 12:19am

If you go on the Fosse website there is a really good article about how he and Stephen Schwartz didnt get along. Fosse made changes to the show that Stephen Schwartz didnt like.
This is one of my favorite shows. The basic plot is about a boy who is trying to find his meaning in life.

[POLisPOL]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 12:19am

I know that the dvd is not the best version of the show, but I really liked!

[BWayBoy88]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 12:31am

The DVD is basically the original production of it. Its just a different cast and in a different theater.

[Broadway Matt]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 1:14am

anyone see Michael Rupert as Pippin?

[BroadwayBound06]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 9:57am

The DVD doesn't have some lines, and aslo doesn't have I Guess I'll Miss the Man which is Catherine's attepmt to mess up the show.

[BillyLawlor]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 11:12am

Actually, the production, if done right, is not basic and simplistic at all. There is so much symbolism and hidden things in this show that we as an audience have to search to find. It is an AMAZING show. And the DVD isn't Fosse's original work. He made it a lot darker and more personal, and the fact that the moral wasn't so clear upset some people, so after some changes were made, it was filmed for television, and it became the show that made Bob Fosse really big in America. I just got cast as the Leading Player in a production of Pippin, and I am so thrilled!

The story below is the one MY production is following:
The plot is about Pippin, a young man fresh out of college looking for something us Americans call "The American Dream"--he's trying to find his niche and where he belongs. He tries going into war, being a political leader, but nothing quite works out. In a lot of senses, it's similar to the film "The Truman Show". The Leading Player is a concept/idea that has been created by Pippin, and he is trying to give Pippin everything he thinks is right for him. Ultimately, he thinks what's best for Pippin is suicide and he sets up his life for him, acting as the boss. The Leading Player creates Fastrada, Pippin's stepmother, Lewis, Pippin's step brother, and Charles, Pippin's father, and Catherine, Pippin's love interest. Catherine is the LEading Player's mistake---she grows to love Pippin and want what's best for him, going against what she created to do by Leading Player, but by the end, Pippin doesn't commit suicide like the players want him to, he goes with Catherine, taking the risk of stepping out into a new world, away from what he has known his whole life.

Confusing? Hell yes...but a BRILLIANT concept.

[BroadwayBound06]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 11:34am

The Leading Player and the rest of the players have done this before and none of the other men before have chosen not to submit to the flame.

[JohnPopa]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 11:50am

I think it's a crappy show that was a) covered up by a talented director originally and b) has a handful of decent songs that people like in cabaret shows and for auditions.

But as a show I can't imagine sitting through it again.

[shlamdiddly]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 12:06pm

"Magic To Do" is like "It's A Small World" though.. it will stcik in your head for DAYS

yeah...we peformed this in 6th grade and i still sing that song

[BWayBoy88]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 12:39pm

"The Leading Player and the rest of the players have done this before and none of the other men before have chosen not to submit to the flame."

I dont think that is true. The Leading Player says "Ladies and Gentlemen, I climax never before seen on a public stage." This is the first time this finale has happened, or would happen if Pippin decides to do it.

[magruder]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 12:47pm

JohnPopa is spot on. It's a really nasty, cynical unpleasant show, that Fosse and Tony Walton decked out to the hilt. The show has a smarmy, contemptuous edge to it that I hate, despite several of Schwartz's attractive songs. (I feel similarly about the Hugh Wheeler version of Candide, which shares a similar tone with Pippin). Still, Fosse was a genius and he made the most of it. And while Schwartz has always been on the record as hating what Fosse did with Pippin, he was lucky to have had him whip it into a hit.

[BroadwayBound06]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 12:54pm

The question is if he is just playing for the audience like he does the entire show. Catherine also has a line mentioning men that have done this before. I didn't not see the original producion because I would not have been born, but I just gather all this from Scott Miller's article on Fosse's site.

[BWayBoy88]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 1:01pm

Ive done the show a few times and basically have the whole show memorized by now and I dont remember a line where Catherine talks about how the finale has been done before. In "I Guess I'll Miss the Man" she compares Pippin to other men, but in no way implies that they have done the finale

[BroadwayBound06]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 1:52pm

This is an excerpt from Scott Miller's article on Pippin.

... It seems logical to assume from Leading Player's rage and surprise over Pippin's reticence that the players have done the show many times before (earlier, Catherine says in the original version that "they" don't usually touch her hand, indicating that other men have done this show in Pippin's place) but no one has ever refused to do the finale until now. If that's true, then they have never needed to sing this song before -- it is, in fact, being made up on the spot. The song's structure is consistent with this interpretation -- Leading Player sings the verse first alone, then Fastrada joins, then the rest of the company joins (it's helpful to keep this is mind while choreographing the finale)...

[sean martin]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 1:59pm

One simple little key to making this work? Think of the troupe as the little voices inside our heads. Think of Fastrada and Louis and Charles as the way we keep our parents inside our heads. That's why it's never been done before: it's all inside Pippin's head, just like all his dreams of success at war and politics that ultimately fail. The LP turns on him at every step just as the little voices inside us force us to second-guess the decisions we make in our lives.

[BroadwayBound06]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 2:21pm

But if this is true then wouldn't Pippin ultimatly commited suicide. If everything is in Pippin's head, then Catherine is to, yet somehow she turns him away from participating in the finale. The show is a show within itself. They're are lines that deffinatly reassure that especially the Leading Player's reaction to I Guess I'll Miss the Man. And when Catherine messes up her lines and the Leading Player repremands her. Is it inside his head? Or are the Players trying to get entertainment out of convincing someone to commit suicide.

side note: Prayer for a Duck is also not in the recorded version.

[TheGirlinTheFrock]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 2:42pm

That is what is so great about PIPPIN. It is up to the director to decide all of this. Are the LP and the ensemble all actors or is everything inside Pippin's head? If they are actors have they done this before? If they arent actors, and ARE inside Pippin's head - how can he spend his life with Cathrine. This is why I love and hate Pippin. Besides some great songs in the show, you can only really appreciate it by performing it and/or working backstage. Its not something you can sit down, watch once, and completely understand it. Only by continously working on it do you REALLY understand the entire concept of the show. I recently worked on a production of it and alot of the audience members just didnt get it. Was it because we did a bad job. NO. I worked on a good number of shows, and that was one of the best i did. Maybe its just the trend now. People are looking for light, happy, feel good shows that they dont have to think about.

[sean martin]

Posted: 7/10/04 at 5:47pm

>> People are looking for light, happy, feel good shows that they dont have to think about.

I dont know that they have to be light or happy, but it does seem you have to dumb things down a lot for folks these days.

[Dawg]

Posted: 7/11/04 at 1:00am

light happy feel good shows they don't have to think about?

Someone needs to tell the producers of Caroline, or Change and Assassins this...and while they're at it, I hear that "I Am My Own Wife" play is a huge bomb...and jeez it seems like no one wants to see that Raisin in the Sun show...

Come on now...why not challenge an audience a little? Pippin is a wonderful musical which celebrates life in it's simplest form of humanity. It let's an audience rediscover why they've made the choices they've made with their lives. It's a lovely score with some of musical theatre's best loved songs. Thank God it came along and helped shape what musical theatre has become.