Score: Stephen Schwartz; Book: Bob Fosse, Roger O. Hirson. At: Bohemian Theatre Ensemble at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. Phone: 773-975-8150; $22-$28. Runs through Nov. 13
Pippin was one of Broadway's hugest musical hits of the 1970s, running from 1972 to 1977. Legendary director/choreographer Bob Fosse's stylish staging featured Ben Vereen in a Tony Award-winning turn as the Leading Player, while the catchy score by Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Wicked) featured song hits like "Corner of the Sky," "Magic to Do" and "Love Song."
However, when viewed nearly 40 years later, Pippin comes off as horribly dated and disjointed, despite the best efforts of director Peter Marston Sullivan's confidently sprightly and stripped-down intimate staging for Bohemian Theatre Ensemble at Theater Wit. No doubt Pippin will find favor as an exercise in nostalgia for fans who grew up with the show, but newcomers (like myself) will guess that all the original excitement surrounding the show had more to do with its surface flash than any storytelling substance.
Pippin is a product of its time, coming off of the euphoria of the drug and sexual revolutions of the late 1960s, but also traumatized by the then ongoing moral quagmire of the Vietnam War. Book writers Roger O. Hirson and Fosse may have set Pippin during the Holy Roman Empire circa 780 A.D., but the show was really more of an analogous mirror for American youth to question their country's idealism in face of brute militaristic reality.
Those wanting a structured story will be aggravated by the abandonment of Pippin's political power plot in the show's second act. It's replaces with a personal journey plot thread for the hopelessly (and annoyingly) naïve title character. The ending involving a mob peer-pressuring self-immolation as a means of achieving stardom is also baffling.
Despite Pippin's drawbacks in the script department, Bohemian Theatre Ensemble serves up a consistently entertaining production with an attractively sinewy ensemble delivering choreographer Brenda Didier clearly Fosse-inspired choreography throughout. The un-amplified vocalizing is also a pleasure throughout.
Travis Porchia makes for an appropriately menacing and knowing Leading Player narrator, while Shawn Nathan Baer makes for a fresh-faced pretty boy Pippin. Michael Kingston impresses with his funny takes on the dual roles of Charlemagne and grandmother Berthe, while Jenny Lamb is a wry and devious Queen Fastrada.
As the down-to-earth love interest Catherine, Dana Tretta is fine and dandy. But Tretta is ultimately undermined with some eye-rolling hippie-dippy dialogue in the second act.
It's odd why the shows authors felt it necessary to latch Pippin's preachy tale of ambition and self-realization to a quasi-historical Holy Roman Empire. And though Bohemian Theatre Ensemble's talented cast members execute their stage duties with plenty of polish and panache, all that effort can't conceal Pippin's flimsy plot and oh-so dated worldview.
