Word: pippins
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...composed for Disney animated features (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin), this is the most complex and rhapsodic, full of swelling passages that are artfully complemented by the Disney artists' imagery of pristine streams and forests. Menken's lyricist, Stephen Schwartz of Broadway's Godspell and Pippin, has a poetic righteousness that deftly avoids propaganda. Colors of the Wind -- among the loveliest ballads composed for a Disney cartoon, and sung to fierce perfection by Judy Kuhn -- ends with the admonition, "You can own the earth, and still/ All you'll own is earth until/ You can paint with...
...Pippin is more ambitious than most, however, as the musical comedy that is painfully conscious of the fact that it is a musical comedy. A traveling troupe of performers present the Life and Times of Pippin, son of Charlemagne, an extraordinary youth who is in search of something to be extraordinary at. Pippin satirizes the genre while at the same time reveling in it. Unfortunately, in this production, neither the satire nor the reveling are fully realized. Pippin requires outrageous, over-the-top caricature and outrageous, over-the-top chorus numbers, neither of which it receives here...
...humorous mugs bring the unsatisfied Prince to life. Sompong has some genuinely funny moments, as when he mournfully sings "Prayer for a Duck" with a look somewhere between grief and self-disgust. He also does an excellent job of avoiding the trap of lapsing into sentimental cheesiness. Instead, his Pippin is slightly more bitter, cynical and world-weary...
...Tuttleton especially shines in her final moments of fury. One could only wish that she could sing as well as she could act. On such numbers as "Simple Joys," her voice clearly strains and can't sustain the notes. A few other cast members, most notably Debby Margaritov as Pippin's love interest Catherine, also lapse in their solo numbers...
Most of the problems with Pippin can't be laid at the feet of the cast, however. Directors Victor Chiu and Adam Hertzman simply did not go as far as they should have. Or perhaps it would be better to say it was impossible for them to go as far as they should have. This show properly belonged on the mainstage, with a much larger cast, stage and budget. As it was, the small chorus seemed hard-pressed to avoid bumping into props during the big production numbers. The cramped choreography also served to restrain the enthusiasm of the songs...