‘Pippin’ proves TUTS needs to find itself
Will the real Theatre Under The Stars please stand up?
“Pippin,” an awkward and overlong production of the 1972 Stephen Schwartz musical at the Miller Outdoor Theatre through Sunday, is yet another stumble after two missteps this year: the misleadingly marketed “The World According to Snoopy” and the overreaching “Dreamgirls.” The organization specializing in professional musical theater, whose annual budget is just below $20 million, has been in search of an identity since the departure of artistic director Bruce Lumpkin in 2016 and, now, the exit of artistic adviser Sheldon Epps.
Growing pains are expected. But how long will it take? The children on the lawn are starting to fidget.
The only reason anyone (barely) remembers “Pippin” is Bob Fosse’s choreography. Set in both the times of Charlemagne and in a sex- and sweatinfused cabaret, the musical shines whenever its Venetian-masked, nakedlegged dancers arch their backs, thrust their torsos or heave on the ground. Their loose, sarcastic and anachronistically chic movements foreshadowed 1975’s “Chicago,” a pinnacle of Fosse’s popularity and influence. The choreography feels timeless because it’s simultaneously an homage to earlier forms of dance and a rebellion against everything that was still puritanical about classic Broadway.
But TUTS’ dancers don’t know where or when they are. Fosse’s signature numbers consist of only about a tenth of this two-hour show, and when it’s there, it’s presented lukewarm.
Nothing else about “Pippin” could have saved the show. The original story, music and lyrics are tragically bad. The plot is a vague approximation of a Broadway cliché: Pippin, based on Charlemagne’s son Pepin the Hunchback, wants to — and it hurts even writing this — “find himself.” That’s it. There are no twists or turns or a point at the end, yet without those conventions the musical is still gratingly unoriginal. Pippin is “empty and vacant” while he searches for his “corner of the sky,” he sings. After wriggling his way out of several sex scenes posing as dance numbers, he lands himself in a second act that goes so incredibly nowhere you might call it Beckett Gone Wrong.
The comedy and innuendo have aged poorly, though the musical is still dirty enough to make you wonder why TUTS would decide to present it at the Miller Outdoor Theatre, where some parents will surely frown at all the PG-13-rated references to sex. The playwithin-a-play conceit of “Pippin” is supposed to make it cleverer than what it wants to lampoon, yet all its songs retain the latent sexism, gay panic and artificiality of a bad musical.
There is, precisely, one good thing about this “Pippin” production. And that is local actor Holland Vavra.
Vavra, as the leading storyteller of the night, wanders in and out of the musical with a refreshing sense of self-awareness and buoyancy. One of the “Wonderettes” at Stages Repertory Theatre, her talent is well charted in Houston’s theatrical history, and here she graces “Pippin” like a dove flapping its wings from inside the Titanic.
OK, she does better than that. It was fun watching this marvelous performer in the same way it is to watch Meryl Streep in one of those terrible movies she does every now and again — you’re waiting to see just how much of the show one person can carry.
Vavra gets some help from the capable and precise Thomas Williams, who stars as Pippin. But it’s not enough. By the end of the languid finale, I was deep in thought about what an organization’s promise of quality is and should be. Because right now, TUTS can present a show and you’ll have no possible way of knowing its intentions.
Look back to the organization’s 2016-17 run. “Into the Woods” and “In the Heights” were two home runs that required hiring New York talent à la the Alley Theatre’s “Syncing Ink.” “Fun Home” was a touring Broadway show repackaged under the TUTS season. “Snoopy” was an undergraduate-level production that’s the result of a partnership with a university. “Pippin,” cast with local talent, is a musical that’s appropriate for ages 15 and up but presented at one of the most family-oriented venues in the city. Is there any other company in town with such range in quality within its own season?
Even for a company in flux, this is worrisome.
Leave ticket-buyers “empty and vacant” enough times, and they might end up doing the same to your venue. So, as the company closes this transitory chapter and enters yet another soul-searching season in October with the musical version of “The Secret Garden,” followed by a pop-music take on Sleeping Beauty during the holidays, I ask again for the real TUTS to make itself known.
The talent in Houston is impressive and underutilized. They are waiting, and so are we.