Pippin

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The cast of Pippin performs “Magic to Do”

(Photo credit: Joan Marcus)

Dear Forty-some Producers of Pippin: Diane Paulus’ production of Pippin is not only the best reincarnation of this forty-year-old, storied musical, it is the best devised musical on so many counts one has to go back into the history logs of musical theater to find a better. Certainly, it stands preeminent today. And that includes present offerings, recent offerings and every long run in town. Not one equals the profundity, the panache, the power of the whole package that is today’s Pippin. So this is what you have to do: convince all those children and their parents, their doting aunts and uncles, their fond grandsires, neighbors and friends that they’ll have a whacking better time at your show – kids and grown-ups alike – than anything that they’ve already been cajoled to see because Pippin has that underlying element every show should have: it’s good for you. It’s just so much dazzlement you never notice.

I never expected it.

I knew that great talents had gone into the staging of the original production, which I hadn’t seen, that its direction was what became remembered, not its story. The Paulus concept employs even more smoke and mirrors gussied up to fresh heights of freshness pointed to gather our admiration, yes, but beyond. What’s beyond admiration? Empathy. She’s geared this phantasmagoric delight to us. Beyond Roger O. Hirson’s wise and witty use of words, beyond Stephen Schwartz’s huggable songs, beyond – well, here’s an example: Berthe (the incomparable Andrea Martin), Pippin’s grandmother, sings to him – and to us – that we should take the time to love the days and the world and ourselves and not just grow old but grow more human. Then, she soars into the arms of a loving aerialist, (superb Grégory Arsenal) and the two of them perform a choreographed poem of sexual love high over the stage even as they display dreams of acrobatic artistry. It ain’t just stunts, it ain’t just beautiful, it MEANS something. That’s high, theatrical art. I am newly in awe of my own, long-gone grandmother. It’s wonderful. Thank you.

Andrea Martin as Berthe and Matthew James Thomas as Pippin

(Photo credit: Joan Marcus)

Is Pippin full of these precious gems? Sorry, no, no show could be that ravishing. You have to breathe sometime in other moments of enjoyment, but this? This is a show stopper of show stoppers. Just to have experienced the achievement is thrillingly life changing, for Pippin, too. As Pippin searches for meaning to his life, we learn a bit more about our own conscious and unconscious searches, too. Pippin is doing something to us, for us, even as all the while it’s an unflagging, delightful adventure. Yet, believe it or not, it’s history. Not exact, but history. The great Charlemagne’s son and heir, Pippin, is beset with strange stirrings he’s not supposed to have. Like, what’s life about? What do I want to do with it? I know I’m going to have to be king after my father dies but there has to be some meaning. I think I’d better find one.

And Pippin searches. More than he intends. He is even seduced by his deliciously beautiful wicked stepmother Fastrada into sort of kind of killing his own father and he finds he cannot bear the consequences. He begs the strange and fascinating personage we know from the beginning of the show as the Leading Player (who conducts a troupe of players depicting this circus of life) to bring back his father and the magic she performs is just spooky enough to delight anyone. She is very good at magic. Like that talking head that was lopped off in a battle. Oh, you’ll have to see for yourself.

Terrence Mann as King Charles and

Charlotte d’Amboise as Queen Fastrada

in a scene from Pippin

(Photo credit: Joan Marcus)

But the Leading Player can’t control everything. When Pippin falls into a despair after trying and trying to find a pathway through existence, he is nuzzled back to at least a willingness to live through Catherine’s simple, homey, farm ways, even though for Pippin, taking care of pigs, and a farm and chores is for the birds. Talking about birds, Catherine’s son, young Theo, has a pet duck. And the duck – goodness, too much to tell. See it, see it, see it. Catherine, you see, is one of the players, and she has stepped out of the story the Leading Player has scripted. She really shines up to Pippin. The Leading Player is not pleased. She has plans for Pippin to throw himself into a great fire for the Grand Finale. The plans and the fire proceed. This relationship does not fit in. The ending of the show is in jeopardy.

But isn’t everything in the telling? I so admired the woven into the show, crazy beautiful acrobatics and flying effects by Gypsy Snider of the Montreal-based circus company, Les 7 doigts de la main, yes, and I applauded Scott Pask’s restlessly captivating settings, and yes I was amused and/or captivated or both with the costumes of Dominique Lemieux, and yes, I thoroughly enjoyed the players, everyone, not just the principals, Terence Mann, Stephanie Pope (subbing for Leading Player Patina Miller), Matthew James Thomas, Charlotte d’Amboise, Rachel Bay Jones and that Andrea Martin but so many more because they went beyond antics. They reached us, again and again. The whole, dizzying, towering, funny, moving, exercise becomes a deep inside savoring for again and again.

Blessings on thee, Diane Paulus, and producers, please work thy buns off keeping this show around for years and years and years. What a good deed that will be.

Pippin (through January 4, 2015)

The Music Box, 239 West 45^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or http://www.pippinthemusical.com