What Separates a Charlatan From a Charlemagne

Pippin was like, the best thing ever. I don't limit that to theatre.

All right, it was merely excellent, not transcendent or revelatory. But excellence is enough these days.

The Good:
I've got to get to this straight off--on top of an expanded principal cast, a specialty ensemble and a dancing ensemble (about thirty featured people, all told), there was a choir of 80. Do you have any idea what it's like to hear "Morning Glow," the monastery music, or the finale sung by that many voices? The ovations were overwhelming.

The dancing was not Fosse's or even a Chicago-ish facsimile thereof. But Andy Blankenbuehler's lively choreography still did the job, with fine work for the opening, the orgy dance and a new bit within "Glory" that (horrors!) replaced the Manson Trio. (In a nutshell, it depicted a couple falling in love and having a child, only to have both the husband and the son slaughtered in the war and the wife raped in the aftermath. Less eerily oblique but still original and compelling.)

The cast was for the most part absolutely wonderful. Michael Arden is an ideal title character--he looks the part, handsome and a little lost, and has a very big, rangy voice that reached all of the odd key changes in Stephen Schwartz's kooky score. Laura Benanti is the kind of unique performer who can really land Catherine's limited role, lovely in her vocals and sharp in her line readings. I'd probably have preferred a genuinely elderly Berthe (I mean, those lyrics are supposed to be bittersweet because she's got one foot in the grave), but Charles Busch did about everything possible with that role. Julia Murney--Christ, what a sexy woman. Oh, she can sing, too.

The Leading Players (the emcee role was spread among Rosie O'Donnell, Billy Porter, Darius De Haas, Kate Schindle and Ben Vereen, a wise choice for a special night) were mostly pretty great or at least did what they needed to do very well. No need to single out any but Vereen--still very special in his original role after thirty years--for particular praise.

There was one unexpected cameo performance: the head Pippin finds on the battlefield was played by Avenue Q's Rod (John Tartaglia). Somehow this hasn't gotten to be old hat yet.

Schwartz's score and Roger O. Hirson's book are what they are, and there are always going to be dissenters. But those who admire both were likely to be thrilled at how completely (and how well) both were performed, including unrecorded oddities like Charlemagne's "Welcome Home," the introductions to "Kind of Woman" and "Morning Glow," and Pippin's prayer for Otto the duck.

Gabriel Barre's staging was dead-on. Much as with Chicago, the best way to do a Fosse show is to not pretend to put up a full production that can compete with a still-vivid original. So Pippin was staged in front of the seated choir, and the choir doubled as sets and effects--raising lighters and glow-sticks, collapsing dead at the end of "Glory," holding up the lyrics to "No Time At All," occasionally rolling down billowing waves of fabric. The featured and dancing ensembles generally hung around the sides of the stage, strolling on to make their occasional comments. The rest of the physical production consisted of a few very nice props and dazzling lighting design. Not something a full production can (usually) get away with, but wonderful for a concert. The mere presence of a lot of people filling a stage makes up for a lot in terms of sets and costumes.

The Bad:
The Grand Ballroom at the Manhattan Center is accessible only by elevator. Ten people at a time. The performance started somewhere around an hour late. Wow.

Arden, for all his excellence in the role, was absolutely exhausted by the end, and fell apart--he was pushing a bit in "Morning Glow," and palpably straining through "Extraordinary," whose last chorus he then muffed. (He covered afterwards with "I just can't read music!") And then fell behind the music for a measure of "Love Song." And then sang the wrong lyrics in the finale (though only a few people probably noticed). In the finale his voice was trembling and breaking, though this may have been a deliberate choice. You can never rehearse these things enough, alas.

Terrence Mann sang beautifully but had an odd take on the line readings; he decided that the great emperor Charlemagne was a doddering old man. No. The diction was also a problem, and a lot of funny lines went to mush.

Of the five Leading Players, Schindle got the fuzzy end of the lollipop--she was given "On the Right Track," and her attractive belt voice and Arden's didn't blend remotely well enough. The number also suffered from the lack of the dance break, one of my favorite parts, but I can't blame them for not wanting to add to Arden's part when he already had so much singing and a fair amount of dancing to do.

The Weird:
Fastrada's relationship with her son Lewis was, er, bumped up a little--what was originally a delicate hint of incest became Murney roughly disrobing soap star Cameron Mathison (ideally cast as someone beautiful and stupid).

The ending was a big departure from the original--the ensemble didn't beckon to the audience after Vereen made his final speech, and Pippin didn't get the "Trapped...but happy" lines. This would be a significant downside but for the intriguing new ending, wherein Theo (Harrison Chad) reprises "Corner of the Sky" as the Leading Players look on approvingly and Pippin and Catherine exit in horror. Totally different but also quite valid, I think.

And regarding the ending--there was one unsettling effect of having multiple Leading Players. The cast occasionally ad-libbed and referred to each Leading Player by name. So when they turned villainous at the end of the show, the odd implication was that Rosie O'Donnell herself was trying to convince Pippin to commit suicide. Not good for her image!

The Afterparty:
We were perhaps naive to go there thinking we'd been invited to the real afterparty--we got into the main room and the cast went straight to the VIP section. Still, through perseverance I managed to get in there as the party was breaking up. And oh, what a (brief) time that was. But another story entirely.