Join Paul Stancato, TLP Artistic Director and Director of Pippin in a deeper look at the story of Pippin, through its creation and unique style. We've got one final weekend of this show, so be sure to get your tickets now!
It's a good opening number in search of a show - goes downhill real fast and a lot of seat squirming and time checks going on in the audience. Lyrics about eagles soaring were trite in the '70s and they're still trite today.
It’s an extremely poorly written show. “I want to find meaning for my life” is an EXTREMELY vague and generic character goal. This is not how you write a compelling story. In real life, EVERYONE is trying to find more meaning. It’s the most boring story goal imaginable. There’s like one scene of compelling conflict in this entire show, when the king dies. And then it’s erased by a later scene.
@@lolamatos2610 My lack of understanding of the show certainly isn't due to lack of trying to understand it: I've attempted to read countless online plot summaries and just can't get through them because they are so confusing and... well... boring. And I'm trying to understand this show because I work at a theater that just put on this show and I was on run crew, so I'm familiar with the entire show from having listened to it behind the proscenium over 10 times and from having watched in before tech in front of the proscenium twice (although to be fair, I didn't make it to Act 2 either time because again, it was just too boring for me to not keep looking at my phone). During the run, I had some conversations with cast about plot. Some of them tried to help me understand it and others said they didn't understand it themselves. Online, I think the most sophisticated explanation of the plot is that the entire play is somehow the demons in his head trying to get him to commit suicide, and by the end, he chooses not to commit suicide or something. After all that, I have absolutely no f-ing clue why it's set in a circus nowadays or what the whole deal with the show within the show is actually supposed to be... like this is extremely confusing and the thing is, I just don't care enough. Contrast this story with the story of Mamma Mia: I had never seen a movie or staged version of Mamma Mia, so I had no idea what it was about. So this is probably in April. Our theater is about to put on Mamma Mia. OK. So I find a high school's version of Mamma Mia (Summit High), I skip randomly towards the middle, I watch one song, and just based on that one song, I felt like I already understood the entire musical. So let's say I happened to watch Slipping Through My Fingers (I don't remember which was the first I actually watched). So I completely new person watches Slipping Through My Fingers and you immediately understand that this woman is really sad about her daughter growing up, marrying, and leaving her. And it's like... that's it! That's the story! That's basically half the entire plot, and you got it all from one song! And then you watch a few more songs, say Our Last Summer, and then you understand this woman is an old maid, but she had a love interest a long time ago, and her character arc probably has a lot to do with coming to terms with that past love life and re-embracing that romantic side of herself. And then you'll eventually realize this is all being facilitated by Sophie who brought her mothers 3 former lovers to their island to find her father. It goes back to the old rule of, "if you can't summarize your plot with a simple sentence, then you need a better plot". So the most famous one-sentencer, for Titanic, is, "The Boat Sinks". A stage play I recently wrote can best be summarized as, "His Daddy Dies". Mamma Mia can probably be best summarized as, "The daughter finds her dads and the mother finds her romance". However, for Pippin... perhaps this would sort of work? You be the judge: "Boy finds his purpose in life." My personal beef with that is that, like I said above, it's EXTREMELY overused and is boring as f**k.
@@TomorrowisYesterday The entire show sucks. It is too woke and it is too geared for kids. The characters almost look like drag queens. We need to ban cross dressing nationwide. Shows like this should be banned as well.
