All That Chat - re: SF Last night Opening of "Pippin" was electricfying

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re: SF Last night Opening of "Pippin" was electricfying

Posted by:	MarkBearSF 02:49 am EDT 09/26/14
In reply to:	SF Last night Opening of "Pippin" was electricfying - Richard Connema 06:06 pm EDT 09/25/14

I'll be interested in your opinions of Sasha Allen (Leading Player). Like you, my previous experience was the original production. I found this version fully satisfying and that the circus staging worked wonderfully. The performances by John Rubenstein and Matthew James Thomas were excellent. At age 17, I was totally blown away and played the OCR to death for years. However seeing a tour a few years later and then the video, I realized that some of the magic it did involved major slight-of-hand. Watching the dazzling choreography, staging and performances, it was easy to ignore the problems with the book and sorta-message. Swapping a hippie ren fair rucksack for a circus bag-of-tricks, Diane Paulus (and Gypsy Snider - originally of SF's Pickle Family Circus and Mime Troupe) came up with different magic to do. And the slight-of-hand tradeoff still works great.

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re: SF Last night Opening of "Pippin" was electricfying

Posted by:	Kimmelhisway 12:50 pm EDT 09/26/14
In reply to:	re: SF Last night Opening of "Pippin" was electricfying - MarkBearSF 02:49 am EDT 09/26/14

Bob Fosse's original conception for Pippin was circus - he changed his mind after the initial set of auditions for the show, but the circus take that's so "original" is hardly new to this project - I'll be seeing this version in LA.

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