Pippin

[ceebeegee]

I think I may have written about this before at some point, but I was reading an ATC thread about Pippin--apparently there's a new ending where Theo takes over for Pippin essentially...he starts singing "rivers belong where they can ramble..." The original ending is (as I'm sure many of you already know)--after the Leading Player and the rest of the Company leave Pippin there with no makeup or costumes or lights, Catherine asks Pippin how he feels. He says "Trapped...which isn't too bad for the end of a musical comedy. Ta da!" Curtain.

Like many a high school theater person, I loved this show, loved the score and practically memorized the William Katt/Ben Vereen video of it. But I HATED that ending--I thought it was a cheesy cop-out (OMG, especially that stupid "Ta da!"). But reading some of the other comments, it may have been Katt's delivery--I think he saw that line as a one-liner, whereas one ATC poster says "It's up to the actor playing Pippin to make it ambiguous - trapped, in this case, isn't necessarily *bad*, just complicated - he's made his choice, and is in this situation now, etc., etc."

Another poster says with the new ending, you have to cast Theo as a teen/young adult, rather than as a child. Hmm. I could still see Theo as a boy (not too young, though) with that ending.

Also, according to another poster, the new ending was conceived by a high school/community theater production that Stephen Schwartz happened to see. How cool is that!

Comments

[dry-2olives.livejournal.com]

The trouble in interpreting Pippin is that the authors wrote a family musical while Bob Fosse (rather brilliantly) turn it into an edgy adult show. He was just developing the nasty attitude that he would later inject onto Chicago. What's on the video is a toned down version of Fosse's staging. When schools & local theatres do Pippin they do not get the Broadway script. As I recall reading, John Rubinstein didn't want to say the "ta-da" because Fosse was making him say it as a sarcastic comment on the general public's expectations when seeing a musical. He didn't want audiences hating him.

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

A sarcastic "ta da" would've worked better than Katt's delivery, which was kind of default-y, like "I can't think of anything better to say."

[neoscribe.livejournal.com]

Hey there, Mama Duck!
Was that you that called on Halloween night; wondering what was going on?
The answer was NOTHING. I was lame and sat at home; watching the Partridge Family.
BTW: What is going on with the LJ these days? People are hardly posting anymore (or they are screening me out) :-(

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

I called you and was going to call Duncan, but I remembered that he was going to some show that night. I wanted to hang out for Halloween...

I've been kind of down lately, that's why I haven't been posting much. The holidays are not going to be much fun for me this year, for family reasons I can't really go into. I'm sure no one is screening you out, everyone loves our Minstrel Man!

[defy-gravity99.livejournal.com]

I have also always hated that ending. I never thought it was as ambiguous as it should have been. So, I guess I understand that his delivery is the problem.

I have heard about the Theo ending and I LOVE it. I think that works better, because it's more haunting. (Of course, the whole production could be haunting and beautiful, if done correctly).