Fosse Fan

I took my daughter to see the Stephen Schwartz musical "Pippin" yesterday at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre for Mother's Day, and it was terrific. I'd seen it in San Francisco nearly 30 years ago when it toured the country, and I grew up knowing all the songs from it. I thought this production was more fun and fresh feeling than the version I saw all those years ago, which surprised me, because the actors in most of the other shows I've seen at the 5th Avenue seemed to have phoned in their performances. "Pippin" by contrast was filled with passionate performers who looked like they wanted to be there and had the moves, the pipes and the desire to perform that can make live theater so exciting. The sets were clever and attractive, the choreography was pleasing if not as crisp as Bob Fosse's original moves, and the male leads were sexy as all get-out and wore fetchingly form-fitting clothes, and sometimes not many of them, so I'm willing to admit that I might have been blinded by beauty over quality to some extent, but I really did feel the whole production was strong and very entertaining.

I grew up knowing all the songs and sang several of them at pops concerts in the seventies, so I'm nostalgic about the show, which also clouds my eyes a bit, I guess. But I've been a fan of composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz since I saw his hit "Godspell" when I was a child. Lily and I really enjoyed another musical by him, "Wicked," when we saw it on Broadway last year. I thought "Wicked" would be a dumbed down crowd-pleasing show with more flash than cleverness, but the story and lyrics were actually wittily written and the music was a pleasure to listen to. The variations on the "Wizard of Oz" theme actually showed depth of thought and meaning. What a lovely surprise.

We went on to read the book on which it was based, which is much darker than the musical version, and became huge fans of Gregory Maguire's writing. We've now read four of his novels, all of which are based on fairy tales we've all grown up knowing by heart but which turn the stories on their heads, give the background and readjust our perceptions of the main characters and their motivations. Rather than slipping into lighthearted fantasy, each one unearths the darker side of fairy stories, human nature and history. Maguire himself lived a sort of dark fairytale childhood; his mother died in childbirth and his father couldn't look after him on his own, so young Gregory was sent to an orphanage for his first five or six years before his father remarried and took him back. He says the sad part ended there, because his stepmother was actually not wicked but a kind and loving soul who raised him well. But throughout his life he's had a special affection and aptitude for seeing into such fantasies and pulling out something rich and dark.

His stories would be nothing without good plots, of course, but what keeps us (and writers like John Updike who also enjoy his work) coming back for more of his stories is his fluid writing, his lyrical style, his fresh and mesmerizing way of leading us into his characters' heads. All of his characters are flawed, some make grave mistakes, most are outcasts of some sort or other. Quite naturally, they make much more fascinating reading than the polished golden heroes of Disneyfied fairy stories we usually find nowadays.

So there I was yesterday enjoying "Pippin" again after all this time and sharing it with my almost-teen daughter, who loves musicals. I'd remembered that this was a slinkier, steamier musical than most; Bob Fosse directed the original, after all, and most of his work drips with decadent sexual overtones. However, I'd read a review that described this production as a bit tired and mired in the seventies, and missing the late great Fosse's oomph this time around. So while I expected some bumping, grinding, sexy costumes and sinuous suggestiveness, I can't say I expected the orgy scene in full fetish gear. It wasn't the most wholesome extravaganza, but Lily's nearly 13 and it gave us fodder for a little amusing chat afterwards. She's a bright, down-to-earth girl and the show was very stylized, so while there was no mistaking the fact that there were sexual overtones dolloped all over the show, it wasn't "Desperate Housewives."

As I thought about the show and of Fosse's other works, I considered the thread of raunchy, threatening sexuality that runs through his major later musicals and through his excellent, disturbing non-musical film "Star 80." In "Cabaret," "Chicago" and "Pippin" the songs and dancing are truly integral to the story: all action doesn't stop when a song starts, and, especially in the Kander and Ebb musicals "Cabaret" and "Chicago," the songs add a lot of richness to the understanding of the characters, the historical setting, the mood. The stories could stand without the songs (and indeed, "Cabaret" is based on Christopher Isherwood's "Goodbye to Berlin"), but the songs in those shows really move the action along and tells us something deeper than most musicals do. They're darker and dirtier than "Pippin" is, and while I like "Pippin," I think "Cabaret" is one of the masterworks of the musical theater, and perfectly suited to the troubled, brilliant Fosse.

But again, I consider how drawn he was to stories of disturbing, bent or bruised sexuality. In "Cabaret" Sally Bowles wants to act wild and with abandon, and brags of her "divine decadence," but it's really bluff, and she puts herself into emotional jeopardy by flirting with love but retreating into sex when true feelings become too scary. In "Pippin," the lead character, a hapless son of Charlemagne, throws himself onto all of life's grandest stages in an attempt to be grander than he is, but he finds himself feeling empty, lonely, broken as a result. "Chicago" stars two ruthless women who kill their men in jealous rages and use their sociopathic sexuality to draw fame and fortune around them as they step on everyone below. In each story, good men get used and broken, burnt like moths attracted to the deadly flame of femmes fatale. Fosse's fantastical autobiographical film, "All that Jazz," which I've found a surprising number of people list as among their favorite movies of all time, shows him (in the guise of Roy Scheider, in what I think is his strongest film performance) as painfully aware of his tendency to hold women at bay while loving them fiercely, if at a distance, and of his countervailing tendencies to try to draw too much of life in at once while driving away the parts of it he most loves. Rather like the main characters in the stories he was drawn to choreograph and direct.