Theater Review : Most Is Fair in Love and War of ‘Pippin’

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  Because audiences going to musicals these days are being fed so many ersatz revues or merchandised blockbusters, the arrival of a show such as “Pippin” must be something of a shock. It’s like the current return to cinemas of Luis Bunuel’s “Belle De Jour”: Just as that film is a reminder of how movies used to be made, “Pippin” is a shining example of how they made musicals 20 years ago.

The fantasy by Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson--based in the Eighth-Century era of the reign of Charlemagne but centered on the king’s son, Pepin--is right in the “Hair”/”Godspell” (also by Schwartz)/”Jesus Christ Superstar” stream of anti-musical musicals. The music rocks; libidos are free, and revolution is happening.

Even better, for a highly talented but modest operation such as Golden West College’s drama department, “Pippin” is small and intimate and human-scale--unlike the current musical cash cows. Directed and choreographed by Brandee Williams, it is yet another Golden West production that brims with confidence, ambition and skill.

Williams has refused to tinker with “Pippin’s” essentials and simply exploits the strong technical plant of the campus Mainstage Theatre to make the show all that it can be visually.

It isn’t quite everything it could be. Some voices lose pitch; some dancing is just not there. The Golden West standard is higher than most colleges’, so the glitches are a little more conspicuous. Still, a .750 “Pippin” is better than no “Pippin” at all.

The staging smoothly traces Hirson’s book, in which the Players, helmed by Leading Player (Ronald Holliday Hills), are a kind of group Theater of the Id. They present us with an actor (Mark Krumme) playing young, naive Pippin. Because this is more fable than history, it is understood to be fake, presentational, ironic. This may be the most Brechtian of Broadway musicals.

Lured and then repelled by his father’s warlike, imperial strategies, Pippin is whipsawed between family loyalty, ambition and a desire to do good for others. Act I follows Pippin’s course to a seeming coronation (and a stirring version of “Morning Glow,” one of the great intermission exit songs). Along the way, he gets advice from Charlemagne (a smart “War Is a Science”) and some spry elders (the be-here-now anthem “No Time at All,” zestfully delivered by Norma Binmore).

Pippin’s retreat to domesticity in Act II is marked by a daring shift of tone, humanized superbly by Diane Walsh as Catherine, a propertied, widowed mother. With a beautifully unadorned voice and real poise, Walsh makes us believe that Pippin would give up his dreams of greatness for being “trapped, but happy.”

But none of this would be convincing without a Pippin to root for. As the character gets the hang of life, Krumme literally grows into the role: His early songs, such as “Corner of the Sky,” are a tad shaky, but by “Morning Glow” and the Catherine scenes he is the very, curly-locked essence of a naive young man discovering life’s cruel ironies.

Some other crucial castings are a little less successful. Hills slinks and smiles his way around the stage as a kind of tempting Magus with teeth--lots of them. He can’t really dance, though, which undercuts “The Right Track,” just as Peggy Magee’s Fastrada (Pippin’s hyper-erotic mother) can’t really sing, which seriously devalues the musical’s most brilliant number, “Spread a Little Sunshine,” a mixture of nothing less than incest, intrigue and assassination.

Calvin Coker, on the other hand, is an absolutely right Charlemagne--steely, pompous, rigid, complete with Captain Ahab beard. His Highness is only slightly upstaged by the stage itself, Charles Davis’ eloquent and clever design of webbed rope shapes suggesting everything from cathedrals to forests, and Lonnie Alcaraz’s fine, laser-accented light design using stage fog as a visual texture, not as a mere effect.

Sound designer Scott Steidinger must attend to some glitches in the system, but costumer Donna Dickens has made hard work look effortless with a wonderfully eclectic range of garb.

* “Pippin,” Golden West College Mainstage Theatre, Gothard Street and Center Drive, Huntington Beach. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 3 p.m. Ends Sunday. $10. (714) 895-8378. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

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Ronald Holliday Hills: Leading Player

Mark Krumme: Pippin

Calvin Coker: Charlemagne

Diane Walsh: Catherine

Peggy Magee: Fastrada

Darren Zinzer: Lewis

Norma Binmore: Berthe

Cody Rodriguez: Theo

A Golden West College production of a musical by Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson, directed and choreographed by Brandee Williams. Musical director: Rick Heckman. Set: Charles Davis. Lights: Lonnie Alcaraz. Costumes: Donna Dickens. Sound: Scott Steidinger.