Pippin has razzle dazzle to believe in

Matthew James Thomas and cast in the Broadway production of Pippin. Picture: Joan Marcus

Opened April 25 at The Music Box Theatre, New York, for an open-ended run.

‘Give ’em the old razzle dazzle’, goes the Fred Ebb lyric in the Bob Fosse-created Chicago, the revival of which is currently bumping and grinding its way through its 17th year on Broadway. And that same razzle dazzle dictum is working overtime –without ever being overworked – in the sensational revival of another Fosse oeuvre, Pippin.

Unlike the Ebb lyric, though, which implies with enough dazzle, the audience may never realise you have no talent, there’s plenty of talent afoot in this new Pippin under the helm of visionary director Diane Paulus. Her work has never seemed more sure-footed and high flying, all at the same time. Like the original 1972 production, the show sizzles with Fosse’s visceral choreographic style freshly re-created by Chet Walker. But Paulus also sets the show – which relates the Medieval adventures of the title character, who happens to be the son of Charlemagne – under a circus tent.

This provides the rationale for an array of acrobatic hi-jinks created by Gypsy Snider, a founding member of 7 doigts de la main, a Montreal-based circus-style performance group. These two major elements combine as easily as bacon and eggs to deliver one delicious moment after another, even as our ears tingle with Stephen Schwartz’s score, including such show tune standards as ‘Love Song’, ‘Simple Joys’ and ‘Spread a Little Sunshine’. The years have given this music a patina validating its richness, probably the most appealing score Schwartz has written.

Paulus gives the darkness intimated in Roger Hirson’s book its full value. Pippin, egged on with more than a hint of fiendish malice by a figure identified only as the Leading Player, is a young man who believes he’s extraordinary and destined for extraordinary things. But brutal and dispiriting experiences in war, sex and power provide no fulfilment, and he eventually realises it’s the quotidian – a caring wife, a child to care for and simple homely tasks – that hold the meaning of life.

Brilliantly anchoring the show as the Leading Player is Patina Miller, late of Sister Act both on Broadway and the West End. She is both seductive and demonic, and her fury when Pippin decides to give up the ‘extraordinary’ life is truly frightening. Furthermore, she executes those Fosse dance moves with breathtaking precision. As Pippin, Matthew James Thomas makes the perfect foil for Miller’s manipulations, holding our sympathy even while he acts like a dunderhead. He also handles the music with aplomb and shimmies up the set’s circus poles like Spider-Man. Of course, he does. This fellow from England put in his time as the alternate Peter Parker in Broadway’s Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

The show’s set pieces are newly and wonderfully realised, especially Andrea Martin’s showstopping turn as Pippin’s lovable and lascivious grandmother, delivering several choruses of her song No Time At All while carrying on erotically with a hunky fellow aloft on a trapeze. You have to see it to believe it. There are also outstanding turns by Terrence Mann as a blustery Charlemagne, Charlotte D’Amboise as Pippin’s sexpot stepmother, and Rachel Bay Jones as the befuddled widow with whom Pippin finds his happy ending.

The original production of Pippin ran for some four-and-a-half years. With any justice, this new version should at least equal that. And who knows? It might even challenge Chicago.

Ron Cohen