✭✩✩✩✩

music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz,

book by Robert O. Hirson, directed by Gabriel Barre

Mirvish Productions and Goodspeed Musicals,

Royal Alexandra Theatre, Toronto

October 31-December 3, 2006

To follow up the success of Stephen Schwartz’s hit musical Wicked, the Mirvishes have brought the Goodspeed Opera House production of Schwartz’s 1972 musical Pippin to Toronto.  As both a production and a musical, Pippin is so far inferior to Wicked it’s fit only for musical masochists with, as the show rightly puts it, “two hours to waste.”   

The set-up is that a group of travelling players, looking like Cirque du Soleil rejects, will stage the story of Pippin (Joshua Park), the eldest son of the 9th-century emperor Charlemagne (former Monkee Micky Dolenz).  In fact, the historical trappings are meaningless since Pippin really is an air-headed, post-hippie Everyman searching for the Meaning of Life who follows whatever suggestion anyone gives him.  Unlike Wicked, Pippin boasts neither a fascinating story nor dazzling design.  All it has is Schwartz’s insipid music and Robert O. Hirson’s extraordinarily lame book that lurches from gratingly clichéd in Act 1 to agonizingly boring in Act 2.     

The best performance comes from André Ward as the diabolical Leading Player.  He alone can both sing and dance up a storm though his character comes off rather more smarmy than menacing.  Park is fine the few times he hits the right notes, but his “dancing” and TV-style acting are embarrassing.  Dolenz’s performance is lost in unintelligible mumbling.  As a revival, Pippin is DOA.   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2006-11-09.

Photo: André Ward (centre) and ensemble. ©Diane Sobolewski.