Pippin at Asheville Community Theatre
Asheville Community Theatre literally rolled out a red carpet from the sidewalk to the lobby for those attending the Sept. 15 premiere of Pippin, the first show of the company’s 77th season. That touch of showbiz flair previewed the performance awaiting inside: a circus-inspired take on the 1972 musical by Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson.
Scenic designer Jill Summers has committed the stage entirely to that circus conceit, with brightly colored tents and dangling ribbons of silk. It’s a fitting backdrop for the show-within-a-show premise of Pippin, which features a troupe of actors under the command of the Leading Player (Naimah Coleman) as they portray the life of the titular prince.
Pippin (Joby Lavery) embarks upon an epic search for meaning, wandering from the battlefields of his father, King Charlemagne (Glenn Lawson), to the bucolic pleasures of the countryside and the diligent routines of farm life. Woven throughout is the young prince’s ache for something extraordinary in life — and the consequences he might face a result of that desire.
Director (and ACT artistic director) Bob White has done an outstanding job of casting the musical’s core roles. Coleman is the total package in the part of the Leading Player, combining instant acting charisma, soulful pipes, and energetic movement; Lavery is wistful and yearning as Pippin, with just a touch of brattiness; Lawson’s Charlemagne is sardonic and world-weary, but still authoritative; and Carolyn Reeves bestows Pippin’s love interest, Catherine, with sweet yet determined vocals.
The smaller parts are also chosen well. Anthony Johnson makes his ACT debut as Lewis, Pippin’s swaggering warrior of a brother, with an easy physical grace. Alexa Edelman is delightfully coquettish as Charlemagne’s wife Fastrada. And Carol Leslie Duermit brings down the house as Berthe, Pippin’s free-spirited grandmother, with the song “No Time at All.”
But the real spectacle of the show is its 12-person ensemble of Players. Choreographer Coco Palmer Dolce has given them full license to bring the circus into ACT, and they fill the stage with motion: glow poi, acroyoga, aerial silks, juggling, and stilt-walking are all on display.
In places, all that energy seems hard to coordinate, though some of the imprecision might have been due to opening-night jitters. The ensemble’s singing, however, felt plenty precise with good harmonies and balance against the leading roles. (The show’s music is provided by backing track, an understandable choice given ACT’s limitations and the size of the orchestra Schwartz’s compositions call for.)
The crew also provides the living canvas onto which hair and makeup designer Nicki LaRue showcases some of the most impressive work I’ve ever seen in a community theater production. As a base layer, each Player gets a treatment of glitter that sparkles as magically deep, not garish. Each then gets intricate details that seem to draw out the performer’s inner character, from a mischievous painted green mustache to a clown’s diamond tears. The program lists six makeup assistants, and I can only imagine they’re all busy up to curtain call each evening.
Pippin is billed as a spectacle, and that it is. Yet the show’s second half asks audiences to consider what’s left when the spectacle is stripped away — when life moves off the stage and enters the realm of the real. ACT’s production of the classic musical is a worthy revival of those questions.
Pippin runs through Sunday, Oct. 8, at Asheville Community Theatre. For details and tickets, visit ashevilletheatre.org.
(Photo by Eli Cunningham)
