All Together Now

All together now

On a recent break from tour (one day exactly) I went and saw a high school production of Pippin that was choreographed by Colleen’s sister. If you haven’t checked out the high school theatre scene in your area… do it. If you really love yourself RUN don’t walk to catch Guys and Dolls, or State Fair or maybe if you’re really lucky maybe they’ll do CATS.

Now let it be known that the choreography was great! Not just because it was my girlfriend’s sister, it was actually quite good. Dance is something that is hard to fake, either you look good moving or you don’t… and the kids looked really good. And that is the last positive thing I will have to say for this blog entry.

So for starters the school was doing Pippin. I’m sorry if I offend any musical theatre types but Pippin sucks. It’s like a boring, meandering and anti-climactic version of Camelot. It’s like King Arthur minus everything good and starring Ashton Kutcher. So why would anyone want to do this hodgepodge of poop? Well apparently the story is lacking (and I mean LACKING) but the music is very good. Which brings me to my next point.

If you choose a show because the music is stellar you might want to cast someone who can make sounds on command. The actor playing Pippin could not sing. He wasn’t awful. It’s not like he sounded like a disabled monkey being raped by a bear, however there were a few very important and climactic notes that Pippin could not hit. You could hear the notes coming a mile away and you knew he wouldn’t hit them. It was the musical equivalent of watching someone with leg-braces jump hurdles. You were REALLY hoping this was the hurdle they were going to clear and each time you winced in sympathy when they landed square on their teeth and then the cycle would repeat itself.

So could Pippin act? Well… yes, however Pippin knew he couldn’t sing. And the audience knew that Pippin knew that Pippin couldn’t sing. And Pippin knew that the audience knew that he knew that he Pippin knew he couldn’t sing. To add to all of that, the audience might have known that Pippin knew that too. You get the idea?

The only saving grace was that the choreography was good and I mean REALLY GOOD but unfortunately the cast couldn’t dance forever. During the first act there were 4 dance routines that not only convinced me not to bite my own tongue off and swallow it but tricked me into thinking that the show would turn around but each time they would stop dancing and start talking, or even worse Pippin would sing. To make things worse, the second act of Pippin has just as many dance routines as Fox News has fairness and balance. So once again the thought of poisoning myself with my own feces in the bathroom crept back into my mind.

Between dance routines as I looked around the room for entertainment and reasons to live I noticed a man in the orchestra pit shaking violently. Upon further inspection he seemed to be conducting. I say “seemed to be conducting” because there was NO ONE PLAYING INSTRUMENTS! Now since that’s bats#^t crazy I figured I just couln’t see the high school band. In the second act we all moved to empty seats in the second row to take a closer look. It was a confirmed crazy sighting. I’m talking Mrs. Havisham crazy and since there were no dance routines in the second act I was able to spend most my time watching Conductor Boo Radley. I feel that one of the greatest educational experiences a person can have is to watch someone who is absolutely clinically clusterf#*k crazy in their natural environment. It was stunning; like a view from a mountaintop or watching Rome burn. This man was standing in a center-stage pit, lit up, in front of about 300 people conducting furiously to Macintosh computer that only required him to press ENTER when it was time for Pippin to howl at the moon.

The real tragedy of Pippin was that if the show was orchestrated on Garage Band, couldn’t conductor Boo Radley have dropped the songs into a key that Pippin could hit?!! If you’re going to do a terrible show that has great music then cast a kid who sings like a cripple runs and orchestrate the entire score of the show on your laptop THROW THE KID A F%*KING BONE! That’s like riding a golf cart past an old woman whose leg YOU BROKE and telling her that you’ll meet her at the hospital.