by In the 2019 biopic Fosse/Verdon, Sam Rockwell cracks a vulpine smile in a rehearsal room scene, playing groundbreaking choreographer and director Bob Fosse. As he describes his grandiose plans for a new musical called Pippin, about the son of the holy Roman emperor Charlemagne, eyebrows are raised among his ensemble. “I know that look,” he says, observing their suspicion. “Remember that look, ladies and germs. It means we are on to something good. We’re going to take what’s here and blow it all up and see what happens.”
What happened? Broadway run of nearly 2,000 performances and five Tony awards (out of 11 nominations). Fosse’s production of Pippin opened in 1972 and when it closed in 1977 it was one of the longest running productions in Broadway history. Not bad for a meta-musical that continually breaks down how it tells its story. With a book by Roger O Hirson, it spins a mordant existential picaresque set in the middle ages following a restless prince who learns life lessons from a colorful cast and, at one point, a sick duck named Otto.
Its composer and lyricist, Stephen Schwartz would achieve one of the greatest successes in musical theater with Wicked (currently being turned into two films with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande). But when Pippin opened, he was just 24 years old, hot off off-Broadway and London hits with Godspell. Schwartz could sell a story seductively and whet your appetite just like Fosse in the rehearsal room. Take the lyrics in Pippin’s opening number: “We’ve got magic to do, just for you / We’ve got miracle plays to perform / We’ve got parts to do, hearts to warm.”
Few songs bring the awe of the theater like Magic to Do. “But also the magic of life,” says Broadway and Glee star Alex Newell, on break from rehearsals for Pippin’s 50th anniversary concert at the Theater Royal Drury Lane in April. Newell is taking on the role of the Principal Player, whose job it is to “engage not only the audience but also Pippin and the players around him” as the prince searches for answers through sex, war and politics.
Newell has had unfinished business with Pippin for years. “I was supposed to do it in high school but I couldn’t because I had to go film Glee,” says the actor, who made history in 2023 with J Harrison Ghee as the first two non-binary winners to won Tony awards. Newell remained with the musical theater series for several years, playing trans teenager Unique Adams. “I missed that time doing Pippin as a teenager so it’s wild to do it as an adult.” For Newell, “Pippin is such a parable that it can stand the test of time.” They saw Patina Miller as the Key Player in the 2013 New York revival; the role that appears in a filmed version of that production was originated by Ben Vereen.
“There were two great people there [on Broadway] who have come before me in this role, both of whom have won awards,” says Newell. “They both had to show such a different side to what everyone thought they were and what they could do. If you’re a great singer or a great dancer, you can’t lump them together – they only know one thing about you. Something that’s known for movement and storytelling, and the dark humor of real life, is amazing.”
London had never seen anything like it – and she didn’t know what to do
Patricia Hodge
In the Drury Lane concert – featuring a 20-piece orchestra and a 50-strong choir – Pippin will be played by Jac Yarrow, who made his acclaimed professional debut in 2019 in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Palladium. The cast includes Lucie Jones (Watch), Cedric Neal (Guys & Dolls) and Zizi Strallen (Mary Poppins) – as well as Patricia Hodge playing Berthe, Pippin’s wise and funny grandmother. Hodge played the role of Catherine, who falls for the prince, when Schwartz’s musical first ran in the West End in 1973.
Hodge agrees that the young composer had a gift for writing that spanned generations. As Berthe, she will sing the rousing No Time at All (“Oh, it’s time to start living / Time to take a little from this life we’re given / Time to take time, cause the spring will fall / I just any time.” The play is “full of great philosophy”, says Hodge, who found herself asking. “How can someone so young write this? I’m older now than [Elisabeth Welch] played Berthe when we did the show and you think: this is wisdom!”
In 2011, Hodge almost played Berthe in a revival of Menier’s Chocolate Factory – which added a video game-style concept – but the dates didn’t work out. Pippin was staged again in 2017 at the Hope Mill theater in Manchester (transferring to Southwark Playhouse) and again in 2020, at the newly opened outdoor Garden theater in Vauxhall, at that strange time of social distance performances of Covid . Having cast half a dozen that fit the “rule of six” as it were, his celebration of the theater’s escape was bittersweet.
How Hodge landed the role of Catherine was the stuff of fairy tales, even if Pippin’s London run was problematic. She and Diane Langton were on stage in a rock version of The Two Gentlemen of Verona and had contracts to do that show. Then Hodge’s friends, Anthony Andrews and Georgina Simpson, returned from a trip to New York where they had seen Pippin and told her that Catherine’s character was perfect for her. Both Hodge and Langton auditioned in London and got roles – Langton as Pippin Fastrada’s stepmother. They were duly released from their Two Gents contracts. “You couldn’t make that up – someone tells you you should take a role and then you get it. It was great. When you feel like life is like that – you later realize that it’s not like that and that those things are very rare.”
The problem was that Fosse was now working on Lenny, his film with Dustin Hoffman as standup Lenny Bruce. Hodge says: “We didn’t get it until the last 10 days of practice. He had a big impact on how the show turned out. These days, West End performers are so skilled they can match Broadway. In those days, we weren’t. We only had four weeks of practice … it wasn’t sharp enough.” Furthermore, “London was not ready for it in the same way that New York was. They had never seen anything like it and they didn’t quite know what to do.”
Pippin London was closed within three months, by which time the three-day week had been introduced by Edward Heath’s government to conserve electricity. Hodge remembers generators being placed outside the theaters and “a depressed time for attendance in the West End”. But her memories of the stage magic are vivid, including those of Tony Walton’s innovative designs and the arresting opening. “It was a completely bare state and then the music started – no big overture – and there was a sudden curtain of light at the front with all these dancing hands, and the lead singer’s face can be seen from it as he sings: ‘Be with us, leave your field in bloom…’”
If you are a great singer or a great dancer, you can never put them together
Alex Null
The Drury Lane concert has hired choreographer Joanna Goodwin and will feature a sequence inspired by Fosse’s famous “Manson trio”, the silky chilling interlude in a battle sequence so captivating it was used to advertise Pippin in a US TV ad. If Pippin is a time capsule of the American horror era – the Leading Player is a controlled culture figure like Charles Manson; the war with the Visigoths is inseparable from the campaign in Vietnam – yet again.
Newell sees parallels with the USA today, where “everyone is on such white controversies … instead of thinking about the bigger thing”. It’s also music about the difficulty of achieving progress. “You have Pippin looking at his father and saying, well, I would never do things like that. But then he does the same thing…you realize that change doesn’t just happen overnight. You don’t go to bed one night and everything changes the next day because you’re in power.”
What lyric does Newell come back to? “It’s not even my song [in the concert] but Spread a Little Sunshine.” Fastrada uses that number as part of a plot twist but it has a simple beauty of its own: “And if we could all spread the sunshine / We could all light a little fire / We’d be all a little closer / To our heart’s desire.” Newell recites some of the lines of the song and concludes: “If we did that, and lent a helping hand, we’d be a lot better than where we are as a society.”
• Pippin is at Theater Royal Drury Lane, London, 29-30 April
