By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
How timely that our hero Pippin’s journey starts with his graduation from college. In just a few weeks, BGSU will celebrate its own commencement.
Though 50 years old, “Pippin” remains a highly relevant musical for college students.
The Stephen Schwartz classic, directed by Michael Ellison, opens tonight (April 7) at 8 p.m. in the Donnell Theatre in the Wolfe Center for the Performing Arts on the BGSU campus. “Pippin” continues with performances Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. Click to purchase tickets.
The story of Pippin (Ian Keller) is told through the lens of a troupe of players. As in “Godspell,” Schwartz captures the tribal nature of hippie culture, except instead of having Jesus as the charismatic leader we have the sinister Leading Player (Nykera Gardner).
The band of players exudes a joyous energy – ribald, bursting at the confines of the stage, creating an undertow that carries Pippin along. Credit here to the quartet of choreographers – Samson Akanni, Ellison, Nicole Line, and Colleen Murphy. The music in this production is provided by music director Heidi Clausius on piano with recorded orchestral tracks.
The Leading Player is the one who enlists this nameless actor to play the title role. She urges the audience to be kind as this is his first time in the role.
Gardner leads the audience on throughout the story, just as she stage manages the production. Late in the show the widow Catherine (Katie Trumbull) defies her and sings “I Guess I’ll Miss the Man,” a glowing assessment of Pippin’s short comings. But she defies the Leading Player and sings achingly about the best man who’s come along.
By this time we sense that the Leading Player’s grip on Pippin may be slipping as we approach the grand finale.
Along the way we follow Pippin as he pursues the meaning of life. The son of Charlemagne, he says as he graduates that what he seeks is not found in books. He wants to lead an extraordinary life. He wants to be fulfilled. He sings that he desires his own “Corner of the Sky.” He wants that is, in more contemporary parlance, to follow his dreams. The musical shows how tricky that can be if taken to extremes.
That journey takes him back to the court of his father, the tyrannical ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, played by Dakota Nelson. Here he meets his scheming stepmother Fastrada (Kayleigh Hahn) and his half-brother the preening strongman Lewis (Samson Akanni).
Pippin goes to war and realizes, after the severed limbs are strewn about the stage, that this is not the extraordinary life he was seeking. It is not “Glory” as expressed by the Leading Player and the cast.
That song about war and its deception and discontents has a lively beat and intentionally trite melodic turns. Schwartz likes to set cynicism to catchy music hall trifles.
Pippin visits his aging, still lecherous, mother Berthe (Grace Whetstone) who urges him to carouse and fornicate before he, too, is old. Yet this leaves him feeling empty and vacant.
He tries being a ruler and a rustic family man. The Leading Player is ever in the shadows leering and pulling the strings. Keller shows how his character’s aspirations are at odds with his simple personality.
The greatest conflict comes when Catherine the young widow pulls the downtrodden Pippin, feeling “empty and vacant,” from the side of the road. She’s lonely and needs help tending to her estate. She also has a young son, Theo (Mazzie Vigh), a rascal whom Pippin tries hard, and ineptly, to connect with.
The actor recruited by the Leading Player to play Catherine is also a neophyte, and maybe just a bit too old to be a “young” widow. Catherine rebels in small ways, only to be scolded by the Leading Player. Trumbull shows that, even as just an “ordinary” woman, she has spine to seek what she needs.
Pippin must understand that as comfortable as this relationship is it is not the extraordinary life he wishes to lead. That’s the road to the grand finale that the Leading Player is luring him toward. It’s an ending the audience will never forget, she promises.
We can only hope that those who receive their BGSU degrees at the end of the month will find the fulfillment Pippin does in the end, and certainly have a less tumultuous journey along the way.
