[NEohioPAL] Pippin

[Jan Harcar]

Oh, it's time to start living!

Tony Award-Winning Musical 'Pippin' Closes Out 76th Season

Only 7 performances left!

 

Weathervane Playhouse has "magic to do" as it closes its 76th season with Pippin - the musical re-telling of Prince Pippin, son of King Charlemagne, who seeks the secret to happiness and fulfillment in this Tony Award-winning delight.

 

Pippin was inspired by history, but it makes no pretense as a historical drama. 

The musical Pippin unfolds on stage with the use of a highly theatrical troupe of "Players," who are guided by a character known as The Leading Player.

 

The musical's two central characters - namely, Prince Pippin and his father, Charles the Great (or "Charlemagne," as he's more commonly known) - are based on the two real-life Holy Roman Empire figures. These men lived and reigned during the early Middle Ages - which places them, roughly, in the years between 750 and 825 (in the common era). 

 

Because Pippin's aim is not to be a straightforward biographical piece, these historical characters serve as the musical's framing device. Their exploits illuminate the show's essential intent, which is the story of the archetypal hero on a great quest for the meaning of life. Also thrown into the thematic mix in Pippin are father-son conflicts, youthful rites of passage, war, issues of budding sexuality and even questions about god and religion.

 

Composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz's musical made a big splash in the 1970s on Broadway. The show's energetic pop-rock score was perfectly complemented by the stylishly sexy choreography and direction of the legendary Bob Fosse. Pippin went on to win five Tony Awards, and it enjoyed a very healthy five-year run on Broadway before closing in 1977. In the years since, many of Pippin's memorable songs - such as "Corner of the Sky," "Magic to Do" and "Morning Glow," for instance - were re-recorded and re-popularized by such artists as the Jackson 5, the Supremes, Dusty Springfield and Petula Clark.

 

Directed and choreographed by Eric van Baars - and with musical direction by J. T. Buck - Weathervane Playhouse's production of Pippin celebrates the timeless story of a young man's journey to find his place in the world.

 

The Pippin Cast and their Ohio Residences
 

Jayson Kolbicz (of Kent) . The Leading Player

 

Connor Simpson (of London) . Pippin

 

Henry Bishop (of Creston) . Charlemagne

 

Maria Work (of Akron) . Fastrada

 

Cody Hernandez (of Akron) . Lewis

 

Karen Wood (of Creston) . Berthe

 

Samantha Rickard (of Ravenna) . Catherine

 

Theodore Mansfield (of Akron) . Theo

 

Julianna Blischak (of Akron) . Ensemble

 

Kylie Casino (of Akron) . Ensemble

 

Allison Good (of Akron) . Ensemble

 

Cody Hernandez (of Akron) . Ensemble

 

Courtney Hostetler (of Canton) . Ensemble

 

Shannon Hubman (of Kent) . Ensemble

 

Seth Hunter (of Kent) . Ensemble

 

Adam Klusty (of Norton) . Ensemble

 

Mike L. Glavan (of Strongsville) . Ensemble

 

Aaron Reese (of Uniontown) . Ensemble

 

The Pippin Backstage Team and their Ohio Hometowns

 

Stage Manager - Jerry Dorton (of Stow)

 

Assistant Stage Manager - Erika Johnson (of Akron) 

 

Costume Co-Designers - John S. Catlos and Jasen Smith (both of Akron)

 

Sound Designer - Dan "D. J." Jankura (of Cuyahoga Falls)

 

Properties Designer -  Todd Dieringer (of Wadsworth)

 

Lighting Co-Designer - Mike Sferro (of Medina) and Jonathon Hunter  (of Akron)

 

Scenic Designer/Technical Director - Alan Scott Ferrall (of Cuyahoga Falls)

 

Assistant Technical Director - Kathy Kohl (of Akron)

 

About the Show's Director 
 

ERIC VAN BAARS happily returns to Weathervane since directing The Sum of Us in 2010 and The Wiz in 2002. He has directed and choreographed productions for Berea Summer Theatre: The Melody Lingers On and Cain Park: Tintypes and Grease.  As Assistant Artistic director of Porthouse Theatre, his directorial credits include Pump Boys and Dinettes and Dames at Sea and choreography for Once On This Island, Big River, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Eric choreographed productions for the Halle Theater: Joseph and A, My Name will Always be Alice, St. Louis Repertory: Into The Woods, Connecticut Rep Once On This Island, and Cain Park: Big River, Fiddler on the Roof and The Sound of Music. 

As a Kent State faculty member in the School of Theatre and Dance, he has directed Oklahoma, Cloud Nine, The Diviners, The Wild Party, Working, Honk, and Lysistrata. Eric also served as co-director for the spring opera program, One Act Wonders, in the Hugh A. Glauser School of Music. He is a member of the Society of Directors and Choreographers.

 

About the Musical's Creation and Production History

 

Pippin originated at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz fashioned an original show called Pippin, Pippin as a vehicle for his fellow student members of Scotch'n'Soda, one of the oldest student theatre organizations in America.

 

After Schwartz graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a B.F.A. degree in drama in 1968, he continued to work on the show, eventually settling on Pippin as its title. By the time the show opened on Broadway, however, Schwartz had cut all of the songs he had written for his college version.

 

Pippin opened in New York City at the Imperial Theatre on Oct. 23, 1972, and ran for a total of 1,944 performances before closing on June 12, 1977. The show was directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, who is also credited with co-writing the show's book with Roger O. Hirson. The original Broadway cast featured Ben Vereen as The Leading Player, John Rubenstein as Pippin, Jill Clayburgh as Catherine, Leland Palmer as Fastrada and Irene Ryan as Berthe. Pippin was nominated for 11 Tony Awards and won five (Ben Vereen as Best Actor in a Musical, Tony Walton for Best Scenic Design, Jules Fisher for Best Lighting Design, Bob Fosse for Best Choreography, and Bob Fosse for Best Direction of a Musical).

 

By the time the show closed in 1977, Pippin ranked as the 10th longest-running show on Broadway. The original production of Pippin was also notable because it was the first Broadway show to film a TV commercial with actual scenes from the show. 

 

A London production of the show (also directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse) opened in the West End at Her Majesty's Theatre on Oct. 30, 1973 and ran for 85 performances. 

 

In 1981, a stage production of Pippin was videotaped for Canadian television. Bob Fosse's dance captain for the original Broadway production, Kathryn Doby, directed this stage production, in which Ben Vereen reprised his role as The Leading Player opposite William Katt (of the ABC-TV show The Greatest American Hero) as Pippin. Pippin purists, however, will point out that this stage version omits several songs and cuts portions of the play. Even so, this stage version preserved on videotape (and later released on DVD) highlights much of Fosse's original staging and choreography and employs similar scenic and costume designs as used in the original Broadway production. 

 

Following the success of the 2002 motion-picture adaptation of the musical Chicago, Miramax Films acquired the film rights to Pippin in 2003 - but cameras have yet to roll for an eventual film version of the musical.

 

In 2009, Deaf West Theatre Company of North Hollywood, California, revived Pippin in a production at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles that employed both deaf and hearing actors in a co-production with Center Theatre Group.

 

About the Musical's Creators

 

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ (MUSIC AND LYRICS) was born in 1948 in New York City, where he studied piano and composition at the Julliard School of Music (while still in high school). Upon graduating with a drama degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1968, he returned to New York and worked as a producer for RCA Records. Soon, however, he began to focus his work toward Broadway. One of his first theatrical credits was the title song he composed for the 1969 comedy Butterflies Are Free. At one point in the 1970s, his musicals Godspell, Pippin and The Magic Show were all running on Broadway simultaneously. For Godspell, Schwartz won two Grammys and two Drama Desk Awards. For the musical Working, he contributed four songs and directed the production's original Broadway production, winning the 1978 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical. Schwartz has also composed several songs for film. With Alan Menken, he collaborated on the scores for the Disney animated films Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the DreamWorks animated feature The Prince of Egypt. His most recent musical, Wicked, has been playing on Broadway and on tour since the fall of 2003. With the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Foundation, he runs musical-theatre workshops in New York and Los Angeles, and he serves on the ASCAP board; he is also a member of the Council of the Dramatists' Guild.

 

BOB FOSSE (BOOK CO-WRITER) was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1927. As the second youngest of six children, Fosse gained attention as a young child through his dancing. Recognizing his apparently natural talent, Fosse's parents sent him to formal lessons - and immediately he immersed himself in tap dancing. By the time he reached high school, Fosse was a frequent performer in Chicago-area nightclubs and burlesque houses. Some Fosse biographers have noted that the somewhat seedy and sexually liberated atmosphere of these performance venues, not to mention his close contact with the strippers and showgirls who inhabited them, must have inspired Fosse's singular style as a future choreographer. Following high school graduation, Fosse enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1945 and served a two-year tour of duty right at the tail end of World War II. Following his military service, Fosse moved to New York City and carved out a career as a performer in variety shows on stage and television. During his early years in New York, he balanced work as a dancer with two rocky marriages to dancers Mary Ann Niles and Joan McCracken. He also won a few major parts in the choruses of a couple of Broadway shows - but his big break came when he made a brief appearance in the 1953 film adaptation of the Cole Porter musical, Kiss Me, Kate. Broadway showman George Abbott was highly impressed by Fosse's dance moves in the film and invited him to choreograph the next show he was directing, The Pajama Game, which opened on Broadway in 1954 - and his next one, Damn Yankees, which opened in New York in 1955. With Damn Yankees, he worked closely with star Gwen Verdon, with whom Fosse established a lifelong creative and romantic collaboration (the two were married from 1960 until his death in 1987). Even following the critical success and popular acclaim of The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees, Fosse struggled frequently with directors who hired him to choreograph. Not willing to give up his artistic control or to compromise for popular taste, Fosse realized that he would have to be both the director and the choreographer to fully realize his theatrical vision. Sweet Charity, which opened on Broadway in 1966, marked one of his first hits as a combined director/choreographer, and he also directed the subsequent 1969 film version of the show. Among his other notable stage credits are How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961), Little Me (1962) and Chicago (1975). Among his motion-picture credits, he directed and choreographed Cabaret (1972), directed a film about troubled comedian Lenny Bruce called Lenny (1974) and wrote, directed and choreographed the loosely autobiographical All That Jazz (1979). Among his many honors, he is a nine-time winner of the Tony Award (eight for choreography, one for direction), and he was nominated for four Academy Awards (winning one for his direction of Cabaret and thus beating Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather). Fosse staged and choreographed a variety show special for NBC-TV starring Liza Minnelli called Liza with a Z, which won Fosse an Emmy Award and made him the first person to ever win top honors in three entertainment mediums - stage, film and television - all in the same year (1973). On September 23, 1987, Fosse died from a heart attack at the age of 60.

 

ROGER O. HIRSON (BOOK CO-WRITER) was born in 1926 and got his start as a dramatist during television's "golden age" of the 1950s, during which he wrote many teleplays for such landmark drama-anthology programs as The Alcoa Hour, Goodyear Television Playhouse, Playhouse 90, Studio One, The Armstrong Circle Theatre, The DuPont Show of the Week and The Philco Television Playhouse. For the theater, he wrote the books for the musicals Walking Happy (which played on Broadway for 161 performances between 1966 and 1967) and Pippin (which ran for a total of 1,944 performances between 1972 and 1977). His off-Broadway credits as a playwright include World War 2 1/2 (1969) and Journey to the Day (1963). His additional television writing credits include A Woman Named Jackie (1991), The Old Man and the Sea (1990), The Ted Kennedy, Jr. Story (1986) and A Christmas Carol (1984).

 

Weathervane's Pippin Ticket and Performance Information
 

Pippin plays on the Weathervane Playhouse Founders Theater stage through June 26, 2011.

 

 Performance days and times are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

 

Tickets for performances after April 28 are $24 each. 

 

$21 tickets for seniors and college students are available for Thursday and Sunday performances. Tickets for children (ages 17 or younger) are $19.50 at all performances after June 2. Additional discounts for groups of 12 or larger are also available.

 

The Weathervane Playhouse Box Office is open Mondays between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., Tuesdays through Fridays between 10 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. and is also open beginning one hour before each performance. For tickets, visit or call the Weathervane Box Office at (330) 836-2626 during Box Office hours or connect online to www.weathervaneplayhouse.com.

 

* * *

 

Weathervane Playhouse and its dedicated volunteers offer vital performing arts resources for the people of Northeastern Ohio. We create exciting and thought-provoking shows with impressive production values. Through educational programs and volunteer opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds, Weathervane serves the theater community, our patrons and our volunteers.

 

The Ohio Arts Council helped fund this program with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, education excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.
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