Pippin: Brayden Bambino (center) with Hank von Kolnitz, Calvin L’mont Cooper, and Ben Bogen – Photo: Daniel Rader
A scintillating take on an enduringly modern musical, Signature Theatre’s Pippin succeeds as the sum of bold and exciting choices in every detail.
The lighting, the costumes, cast and orchestra, makeup, wigs, choreography, and, of course, the staging by Signature artistic director Matthew Gardiner, all appear designed and executed to realize a singular, sensual vision for the 1972 musical, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Roger O. Hirson.
A completeness covers the whole shimmering production from top to bottom. Even the stage is aglow, an in-the-round light installation from scenic designers Christopher and Justin Swader serving as center of the action.
So all this world’s a stage that never goes dark for the merry band of Players regaling us with the tale of Prince Pippin, eldest son of Charlamagne, and his epic quest to lead an extraordinary life.
As the enigmatic Leading Player, who conducts his troupe (and the very show we’re watching) with a firm hand, Cedric Neal slinkily embodies the brilliance that might entrance starry-eyed Pippin (Brayden Bambino), as well as the darkness that, at times, threatens to consume him.
A soulful interpreter of Schwartz’s score — giving us a glorious “Glory” — Neal also articulates Rachel Leigh Dolan’s Fosse-esque choreography with pizzazz, moves rippling and rolling from shoulders to fingertips. The entire galvanized ensemble exudes that brazen, seductive confidence whether dancing or standing still.
For Bambino’s Pippin, confidence comes dashed with guileless charm and youthful doubt, reflecting the duality of both the character and the fresh-faced Player “performing” the role. As Pippin’s scheming stepmother Fastrada, Maria Rizzo serves brazen confidence straight-up, as the queen angles for power for herself and favored son, Lewis (Ryan Sellers).
Lending mother and son a suspiciously close rapport, Rizzo and Sellers make a fiery, wickedly funny pair. The ruler himself, Charles the Great, is more of a solo act that Eric Hissom injects with wit and a sort of lewd vanity.
This king presides over a debauched court, fueled by lust, corruption, and war. In fact, “Fighting wars is the most important part of being king,” says Charles. Understandably, Pippin believes there’s gotta be something better than this.
Rejecting his father’s kingdom to find a meaningful life on his own, Pippin isn’t the first prince, literary or literal, to turn on, tune in, and drop out.
Pippin: Brayden Bambino and Cedric Neal – Photo: Daniel Rader
Schwartz and Hirson dipped way back to the Middle Ages to tell us that things are as they’ve always been. A young man might seek meaning through escape, through sex, through power and the admiration of others, but in the end, he won’t have much unless he also finds love.
Pippin does stumble into romance, with the widow Catherine (Awa Sal Secka), who arrives late in the tale, like a final piece to the puzzle, along with her adorable tyke Theo (Ellison Bihm).
Pippin tries hard to resist her, and the stability and calm a domestic life might provide. But there is no resisting supple-voiced Secka, serenading him so warmly with “Kind of Woman,” practical, modest Catherine’s profession to Pippin that she understands his reticence.
He might not want an “everyday, customary kind of woman,” she sings. “But things change.” Some boys do become men, and, having lived to the fullest and grown wiser for it, this prince earns a happy ending, expressed tenderly in the minor-key strains of “Love Song.” Yet, as one odyssey ends, another begins.
In Bihm’s precocious Theo, we see the next generation poised to reach for his own meaningful life, as the boy sings us home, closing this fabulous production in angelic a cappella reprising Pippin’s plea: “Rivers belong where they can ramble/Eagles belong where they can fly/I’ve got to be where my spirit can run free/Got to find my corner of the sky.” This company definitely has found theirs.
Pippin (★★★★★) runs through July 26 at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Avenue in Arlington, Va., with a Pride Night performance June 12, and Discussion Night performances June 3 and June 16. Tickets are $47 to $153. Call 703-820-9771, or visit sigtheatre.org.
With or without a dead body turning up, nothing in literature quite stirs conflict like a crowded weekend in the country. Sondheim knew it, and even wrote a song about it. Agatha Christie knew it. And so did Anton Chekhov, whose works served as inspiration for Christopher Durang's hilarious Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which took home a Tony for Best Play for its original 2013 Broadway production.
Durang borrowed names and themes from Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Seagull, among others, to construct his witty, occasionally absurdist tale of three very grown siblings at odds, ostensibly over the potential sale of a country house, but really over all the differences, both petty and profound, that have divided them throughout the years.
Art imitates life making art in GALA Hispanic Theatre's disappointing world-premiere musical Aguardiente: Where Magic Transcends Borders. Presenting a show within the show, Aguardiente burrows into the creative process of friends and collaborators Alberto (Samuel Garnica) and Alejandro (Sebastián Treviño), struggling to create a musical that draws from and celebrates their Latino roots and culture.
Their struggle to define what they want to say is perhaps too aptly reflected in the scattered script and production of this show, directed and choreographed by Luis Salgado (GALA's Helen Hayes Award-winning In the Heights).
It's rare for a play's themes to resonate with quite the impact and immediacy that Tracy Letts' incisive The Minutes did for me the other night. Keegan Theatre's boldly-staged production, directed by Susan Marie Rhea, landed a direct hit to my conscience, although the play got a hefty assist from coincidence.
Just hours before seeing this comedy about town leaders who reckon with their town's checkered past regarding Native Americans by rewriting history, I, by chance, visited the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.
Several exhibits there -- including one that reduces the U.S. Indian Removal Act to a bold business decision that, "in creating wealth" for the nation and for Southern millionaires, "was a spectacular success" -- left the alarming impression that history is being whitewashed before our eyes in real time, let alone in the fiction of Letts' 2018 Pulitzer-finalist play.
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