The Lehman Trilogy on the West End: Incredible Acting in an Early Draft Play

​“Fiddler on the Roof” is an important show for so many reasons. It’s a golden age classic with a memorable score that has held up today. It’s up there with other classics like “The Sound of Music” and “Singin’ in the Rain” in terms of how important they were to my upbringing and development. But most significantly, Fiddler is a consistent reminder to a people who apparently need consistent reminding that the fight against racism and fascism is a serious one, a terrible one, and an apparently never-ending one. “Fiddler” has never been as relevant in my lifetime as it is today, as we grapple with the shock and terror of the government discriminating against an entire religion again. Despite this fantastic revival closing over a month ago on Broadway, I’m still thinking about it regularly, about how fantastic this cast and production were, how moved I was at moments that I never really cared for before, how yet again theatre exactly reflects the struggles of humans today. I don’t usually write about things I’ve seen that have long since closed, but I have been thinking about it constantly and about how important it is to keep talking about the issues raised by this beautiful show and to add to the chorus of sane people who don’t think religious persecution is okay.

If you aren’t familiar with “Fiddler on the Roof”, a) I don’t know how you put pants on and b) you really should rent the movie at the very least. IT IS A MARVELOUS CLASSIC. It’s about a poor milkman named Tevye who lives with his wife Golde in Anatevka, a small village in Russia in the early 1900s, right about when the violent pogroms of that decade (not to be confused with violent pogroms of other decades) were happening. Tevye’s favorite thing to kvetch about is that he has five daughters. “Five?” “Five!” he always answers in a way that conveys how hard it is and also how proud he is. Tzeitel is the oldest, and she is in love with her best friend, the tailor Motel Kamzoil, in an era when marriages were arranged. Hodel is the next oldest, followed by Chava. We follow these three as they fall in love and deal with the ramifications of their choices, when they aren’t supposed to be making any choices. We also have Shprintze and Bielke, the little ones who don’t do much but for damn sure will be the names of two of my future dogs.

If you’ve only seen the movie with Topol, then you still know how great the show and the score are and Topol is on your list of Top Five Mosts. Or maybe you have seen footage of original Tevye, Zero Mostel, or at least have the original Broadway cast recording and love Zero. Topol and Zero set the bar for most Tevyes to be somewhat comical and often over-the-top, as well as establishing the unwritten rule that actors playing Tevye have ridiculous names. But Danny Burstein turned all of that on its head, surprisingly, but beautifully. First of all, his name is Danny. Second of all, his Tevye was more grounded, warmer, and unbelievably charming. His humor – and there was so much of it – came not from the usual comic broadness but more from a place of warmth, sincerity, and Elmo-levels of adorableness. In fact, I would not have been surprised if his Tevye had been given an extra song called “The Letter of the Day” (p.s. my favorite song). He does get angry and mean at times, of course, but it’s more believable and moving because he built up that earnest and loving foundation. He’s a much more rounded and authentic character because of it.

And he wasn’t the only stunningly authentic aspect of this revival. More than any other production of Fiddler, this revival felt real, like it was happening in real life. I mean maybe that’s because it is, actually, happening in some form, and in America no less. But the family and the townspeople came across as people I felt like I knew, whose struggles I cared about sincerely. The sparse set of the farm and the effective lighting helped Danny tell his story in a way that made me forget I was in a theatre. (Well, until the grown ass adults who don’t know how to behave in the theatre needed to be shushed behind me.)

As soon as it began, this production distinguished itself from all others. Bartlett Sher, one of the greatest directors today of golden age musicals, used a very controversial framing device to open and close the show. At the start, Burstein walked onto the stage in modern clothes, wearing a red ski jacket, bare-headed, and he looked around Anatevka while holding a book – the book that Fiddler was originally based on, Tevye And His Daughters, by Sholem-Aleichem (pen name obvs). He said the famous opening line of the show – regarding the precarious perch of a fiddler on the roof, “sounds crazy, no?” – in this outfit. Then he slowly took off the jacket and put on his Tevye cap and prayer shawl and transformed into Tevye, like he was a modern man exploring his ancestors’ history, going to Anatevka both in person and in the abstract. I’d heard a lot of debate about people loving or hating this tiny update, and I expected to hate such a change to a revered classic, but I thought it was very effective in its message. More on that at the end.

That was the only noticeable difference, and in less than a minute we were off to a rollicking start with “Tradition”. The medium-sized chorus on that cavernous empty stage seemed a little wrong at first but the joy of the song and the enthusiasm of the cast improved it. We then saw a little interaction between Tevye, his wife Golde – one of those great early stereotypes of a shrew who always gives her husband a hard time – and the matchmaker Yente. In her small role, Yente is usually worth her comic weight in gold, and although at first I was resistant to Alix Korey’s more restrained Yente (compared to the usual), she quickly won me over with her hilarious, sarcastic line readings. 

As we went into “Matchmaker” I remembered that nearly every song of this score is beloved and memorable. I got even more excited but then kind of disappointed, as “Matchmaker” was the one part I was annoyed with. “Matchmaker” should be a bouncy, energetic song. Yet most of this rendition was slow, thudding along sadly despite the song screaming for liveliness. Also, this is one of Tzeitel’s only real moments to shine, yet I thought the usually-great Alexandra Silber was lackluster. Between her substandard vocals and the too-slow tempo, it was the one low point of the production. 

Luckily, the next Top 10 hit on the schedule was “If I Were A Rich Man”. If I were a rich man, I would have made a tie in last year’s Tony Awards so that Danny Burstein could have won a much deserved award despite the existence of Hamilton. He was everything. I am still in awe of his performance. He made this ridiculous song feel important and touching and he was so lovable. His little celebratory shimmy that he did throughout “Rich Man” will stand throughout eternity as one of the Top 3 Shimmies, up there with Hillary Clinton’s Debate Shimmy and John Mulaney’s Realtor Trying to Pressure Him into Having a Baby Shimmy. 

Tevye’s relationship with his wife was, as was the trend, also more understandable and moving than I’ve ever seen. This is probably because Danny was amazing and Judy Kuhn, as Golde, was his equal. I was kind of upset not to have caught the original Golde of this production, Jessica Hecht, with her kicky beret. (Hecht was Susan, Ross’s ex-wife’s lesbian lover, throughout the entire run of ‘Friends’. You know her.) But not really, because Judy Kuhn was the most exciting replacement they could have possibly announced. She is always dependable and guaranteed to move you to tears even when she only has one song (one insane killer song) like in “Fun Home”. I loved their bickering and Danny was at his funniest when responding to her. And Judy made Golde, who is usually played harsh in her shrewishness, seem like the grounded reasonable one in the family, more pleasant than ever.

As for the daughterssss the daughters, they were solid in general. As I said before, Silber’s Tzeitel was kind of disappointing considering that she is usually great, but she wasn’t bad. I loved Adam Kantor’s Motel (the tailor Motel Kamzoil, as you always have to say), mainly because he was a dead ringer for every boy who went to my camp. Real Main Line Jewish looking. I would have loved to see him as Jamie in “The Last Five Years”. His “Miracle of Miracles” was joyous and fun, although the blocking felt a little off. He and Tzeitel were far apart a lot, which is weird when they are celebrating their love and impending marriage. I also really enjoyed Samantha Massell’s Hodel. She had a gorgeous voice and her presence just felt right, very appropriate for the role. Melanie Moore’s Chava was very good too. I especially liked that she looked like Keri Russell with that signature pointy chinface and so it was like a small signal that she was going to fall for the Russian. Apparently, she was a winner on ‘So You Think You Can Dance’, which is awesome, so although the little dancing she did was beautiful, I would have loved a lot more, considering. 

One of the best scenes ermagerd came really early; I forget how chockfull of winners this show is. “To Life”, the one everyone knows (or is that every other song), was su-freaking-blime. Tevye’s classic miscommunication with Lazar Wolf, when Lazar wants to marry his daughter and Tevye thinks he wants to buy his cow, is as wonderfully chauvinistic as ever and just hilarious in the hands of these actors. Throughout this show, even though you know what’s coming at every step, it’s still so enjoyable. And this is where the choreography from Hofesh Shechter started to shine. This choreography was a big deal, because productions usually use the original choreography or stuff that looks like it. Hofesh, instead, created this energetic and kind of wild choreography that really jumped off the stage and brought new surges of celebration to “To Life” and new levels of meaning to the movement in other scenes, namely the wedding scene, which seemed to go on forever yet ended too soon. It was glorious dancing. Somehow in its frenetic movement, the ensemble looked like they were black charcoal drawings that came to life. So many horizontal lines thrashing about and it really looked like sketch art. It was enthralling and entirely unexpected. I made a big deal last year about how “Shuffle Along” should have won the Tony for Best Choreography over “Hamilton”, but I later changed my mind when I started really looking at the latter’s lyrical movement. However, I honestly think I would have voted for “Fiddler” now; it was that unexpected and impressive. I mean anytime you have Jews in suits doing those super-low quad-burning Russian squat kicks I am IN. But in “To Life” and especially the wedding scene and its ‘bottle dance’, I was blown away by how scrappy and kind of feral the movement seemed and how much I was reminded of etchings. It made me really understand the meaning in movement, as it was obvious that these men (it was mostly the men dancing like this) were dancing for their lives, trying to keep it jubilant but veering towards desperate, reflecting their struggle in their increasingly violently anti-Semitic society. 

The scene I was most excited to see on Broadway was the big dream sequence, when Tevye fakes a visit from his grandmother beyond the grave in order to convince Golde to allow Tzeitel to break the engagement with Lazar. Grandma Tzeitel’s little old lady voice always kills me and here was no exception. Danny and Judy were wonderful on their little twin beds too. I was really surprised, however, at how Fruma Sarah, Lazar Wolf’s deceased wife, was done. I expected her to fly. Even in our high school production we had the girl flying around in the rafters like a real scary ghost would. Instead, Fruma Sarah was a giant demon in statue form, wheeling around the stage at maybe 20 feet tall. Really odd! It still worked okay, especially with the ghostface killah ensemble, but I remember thinking this is so weird! Like a giant statue. On wheels. And no flying! Whatevs.

At least one thing that went as expected was how moving “Sunrise, Sunset” would be. It was beautiful and perfect, although every time I hear that song, I can’t help but remember our high school production and how one night our Tevye began the song singing the second verse, and all the kids facing me, with their backs to the audience (so, the other main characters) were cracking up and shaking. Hilarious. This was not hilarious but it was lovely, and followed by the aforementioned impressive extended dance scene, including when the men danced with bottles balanced on their heads. I’m sure they were attached somehow but that didn’t matter. I didn’t want it to end. Well except it’s the last part of Act I and I really had to pee but you get what I’m saying. 

The wedding scene is also where the real drama of Fiddler starts to boil over, when it’s no longer about family problems but about an entire people being persecuted. So, it’s when the decent people in the audience start shifting in their seats and going, oh shit, this is familiar. The Russian officers of the village break up the wedding and destroy everything and threaten all the Jews with continued violence. It was devastating to watch even without the real-life context, but with it, it was chilling. 

In Act II, the next two daughters, Hodel and Chava, see their frowned-upon romances bloom as Tevye struggles to handle how everything he knew to be sure is falling apart, as the Russians take more control, more violence occurs, and the village hears more news of Jews in similar villages being forced to flee. Whereas before I would be upset with Tevye when his anger erupts at his wife or children, thinking why can’t he just let them be happy, it made a lot more sense to me through Danny’s performance. Everything he knew is changing against his will. All of his traditions are being destroyed, his family is separating in ways he never expected, and his entire way of life is threatened because of his religion. Each part separately would be a lot to handle, so expecting him to retain any semblance of self-control or compassion is expecting too much of one decent man. 

As the threat of the Russian takeover builds, Hodel falls in love with the girls’ high-minded revolutionary tutor Perchik, a very political activist who I hope has been reborn today to help fight in this same fight again. Sure he gets sent to Siberia as punishment for his activism but at least he’s fighting injustice. Ben Rappaport did a fine job as our activist, and even though Perchik gets what I think is the ugliest song ever written for musical theatre, “Now I Have Everything”, he made it bearable. Seriously though, it’s such a bad song. It’s really hard to not sound terrible on, and then it ends on the wrong note, kind of like the end of Javert’s Soliloquy when all of a sudden you’re like oh what I was not expecting that note in that key to be where that phrase ended up, but at least for Javert the music swells and changes to make that weird ugly note make sense and it all resolves. Nothing resolves in “Now I Have Everything”, it just stays ugly like nails on a chalkboard as the final ‘wrong’ note just lingers. Yeesh. Hodel’s relationship with Perchik, though very briefly shown, felt believable, mostly because Samantha did a fantastic job with her heartbreaker of a song, “Far From the Home I Love”. These later scenes felt extra touching because the lighting changed with the mood of the show, as Tevye’s heart broke more and more.

Meanwhile, Chava develops a relationship with one of the very Russians destroying their lives, Fyedka. Sure he is one of the nice ones, but he’s still part of the group that is persecuting Tevye and his people. It’s more than Tevye can be asked to manage, and so he orders his daughter to stop seeing him, even though she loves him, because he is the enemy. I always hated Tevye when he disowns Chava after she elopes with Fyedka, but Danny made Tevye’s journey to that decision so convincing that even though it’s cruel I could understand why and how he could do that. It’s the only thing left for him to do in his efforts to keep a handle on what he knows to be true. And his fragile and heartbreaking “Chavelah” was too much for any of us to handle. Ugh it’s so sad. 

Then of course there’s no time to mourn because the Russians are forcing all the Jews to flee their homes for who knows where because people are terrible and dogs should rule the planet and make things better. “Anatevka” is as sad as ever, more so because, like I said a hundred times, this is happening again and I don’t want to think about how many people in that audience helped make it happen and/or aren’t doing anything to fight it. We all know now that “Fiddler” is timeless, but who thought that 50 years on it would not only have such a lasting score and important message but that it would be so scarily relevant to what’s going on in our society? This is where the framing device used in this production really paid off. As the villagers wheeled their carts, stuffed with all the belongings they could fit, around the stage to signify their leaving during “Anatevka”, Tevye separated himself without really being noticed and Danny showed up in the modern clothing and the red coat again. As the villagers sang, he watched and then decided to join them, taking the handles of a cart from one of them, breaking through the division between his ancestors’ past and his present, the world he knows and the world whose history he was exploring to show that their fight was his fight and vice versa. He represented us, today, and how we are now facing that same choice of whether to join in that same fight that the people of Anatevka were fighting. It was so effective, and so frightening. It was a small, subtle way to lift this production to even higher levels of quality and emotional significance. I hope that this show, one of the most widely produced musicals ever, continues to be performed and continues to inspire and teach people about religious persecution. And that religious persecution is wrong; I feel the need to clarify nowadays. It’s wrong! Okay? Got it?! good. 

It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we’re talking “Pippin”, at the Southwark Playhouse in London until Saturday. 

“Pippin” is one of my best known, and best loved, shows. It lends itself so well to grandiose ridiculous spectacle, like in the most recent Broadway production, while still having a beating heart, an eternally provocative book, and one of the best all-around scores in musical theatre. So I was intrigued to see what a little almost-black-box of a theatre like Southwark Playhouse could do with the material. It’s been a long time since I saw a production of Pips that wasn’t full-out Cirque du Soleil treats – in fact, the last time was in high school, when I was indeed in a non-circus non-world-class-acrobat version. I couldn’t help but wonder (just a little call out to Miranda running for governor treats!), how strong are the bones of the show? Will it still produce the thrills and astonishment I remember even without all the flying through the air with the greatest of ease? And the answer is, those bones must have read The China Study and learned about how milk really isn’t the answer to osteoporosis and instead they’re eating vegetables and doing resistance training because hell yes, they are strong. 

Not that I’m surprised, because it’s such a great show. But it really does lend itself so well to spectacle, so it’s nice to remember that even without mind-blowing choreography and amazement, it’s still solid and enjoyable. Losing the circus tent of Broadway and all the splendor and magic that came inside of it was a bit of a let-down, I’ll be honest, because that production featured some of the most insane stuff I’ve ever seen humans do, and that augmented the show rather than overwhelm it, so naturally I’m gonna prefer that version all other things being equal. But seeing the bare bones of ‘Pippin’ was a great opportunity to revisit what makes it so special, and to remember that it is so special as is. And that even with an average cast, the music shines and the story resonates.
 
That story is the really not historical tale of Pippin, the son of King Charlemagne, and his coming of age as he tries to figure out what to do with his life in order to find fulfillment. He’s your typical young white male character, having literally all the resources and opportunities in the world open to him but feeling discontented and unsatisfied with this or that. He tries this or that, to continued exasperating dissatisfaction, because he believes himself to be destined for something extraordinary. I mean wow did they nail today’s white male youth or what. So Pippin’s story is told by a traveling troupe of performers, led by the Leading Player, and this performance that we are seeing is the very first with this particular actor playing Pippin. So every now and then we’ll get him doing something different from usual or a different ensemblist messing up, requiring the Leading Player to say something to remind us of that show-within-a-show frame. This is important, because the actor playing Pippin is having the same existential crisis as his character, and he’s subject to the same delusions of grandeur that Pippin is. 

The Southwark Playhouse always does stellar work, in such a tiny space with pretty much nothing in terms of resources or special effects, or sets, really, so it’s entirely up to the cast and creatives to make magic. I was prepared to be blown away as I usually am here, with this theatre, effectively Off West-End, doing work that often is stronger than the proper West End shows (especially right now, when the favorite British musical winning over unsound audiences is, well, you know I don’t want to talk about that anymore). And while this was the most enjoyable musical I’ve seen in London in 2018 so far, it was heavily due to the material and not really this production in particular. The production was solid, don’t get me wrong, but not as great as I expected. And a few things rubbed me the wrong way. Like, the cast is entirely white, except maybe one ensemblist who might not be. I’m sorry to be making generalizations about her race but I’m trying to give them the benefit of the doubt that this show isn’t 100% white despite being performed in one of the most diverse cities in the entire freaking world, and even so it’s still a real let-down in terms of diversity. It’s weird, it’s obvious, and it’s just not right.
 
That whiteness means that the Leading Player, the lead role, is played by a white lady, which is JUST WEIRD. Now that was okay to do in my high school because my little suburb barely had Asian kids in drama club let alone black kids, but (Joey’s voice) in LONDON? The Leading Player is historically black, originated by the legendary Ben Vereen and then in the revival by the great Patina Miller, and a white lady just made it I don’t know, it made it like school. She was kind of a school marm. Genevive Nicole, talented as she is, was simply completely miscast, and only in part due to her race. She didn’t have the terrifying, exciting, mysterious, sexual, electrifying qualities that the Leading Player needs. And because her casting fell way short, for the first time, it really seemed like Pippin’s show. Despite being the title role, Pippin has always played second fiddle to the spell-binding Leading Player, whose actors have started illustrious careers on the magic they made in this incredibly meaty role. No matter how great Matthew James Thomas was in the 2013 revival – and he was REALLY great – it was still Patina’s show. I wasn’t lucky enough to see Ben Vereen in the original production, but come on, it’s freaking Ben Vereen. I think we can agree that he made the show. And that’s how it always is – the Leading Player lives up to the name, and Pippin is right up there with her but a little less extraordinarily, which is ironic because of the song he sings. But here, because the LP was weak and the actor playing Pippin (Jonathan Carlton) was actually the strongest one in the cast, the usual dynamic was flipped on its head and it became truly Pippin’s show. I was riveted more than usual in his plight and his growth as a character. The beauty of his songs stood out more. Meanwhile, the Leading Player became like a side character to me, just another of the ensemble except with more lines. She vanished completely into the shadows for me, and not in the good way that you expect the LP to be living in the shadows. It was incredibly interesting to witness this change, unintentional as I’m sure it was.
 
I was also surprised at the decision to have one actress (Mairi Barclary) play both Berthe and Fastrada. Pippin’s hilarious grandmother Berthe usually steals the show with her comedic bit, while Pippin’s conniving step-mother usually has a thankless song unless performed and directed perfectly. It makes some sense to double up on the roles, when you have a small cast, since they each have one big number and that’s pretty much it. But focusing on such different characters meant that a little was sacrificed from both. While a talented performer, Mairi made weird choices that didn’t work for me. Her Berthe got off easy, because the audience will eat up everything that character throws at you and be sublimely happy doing so, so that’s a hard one to mess up. Kind of like Charles/Charlemagne, it’s written to be adored and hysterical. It was just a little too goofy for me; when all the humor you need is written into the part there’s little need for bared teeth gags. But Fastrada was a mess. Her “Spread a Little Sunshine” is really hard to get anything out of, and it’s thankless unless she makes it obvious that she’s lying about spreading happiness and joy because her main goal is shrewd manipulation. None of that came across here, mainly because the actress was doing a heavy Scottish accent. And I mean heavy. Like worse than Mike Myers in “So I Married an Axe Murderer” when he plays his own grandfather and shouts “HEEEAD. MOVE. NOW!” It made no sense for the woman who is supposed to be gorgeous and sexy, so much so that the king is blinded to her scheming, to instead be kind of vulgar, calling herself a ‘hoosewife’ and letting the heavy accent get in the way of her subtle lines. I mean the whole “I’m just an ordinary housewife and mother, just like all your ordinary housewives and mothers out there” line is only funny because Fastrada clearly isn’t ordinary, and for damn sure isn’t a housewife. But here, yeah for sure she was just a dowdy housewife…so…. It didn’t work at all.
 
I did enjoy our Charles/Charlemagne, Rhidian Marc, who did a fine job. Like Berthe, that part is written to win over audiences with almost no effort, so any effort the actor puts in just makes it all the better. I particularly enjoyed his famous line, given in a little confidential bit to the audience after his wife asks for more money, when he says “You know, sometimes I wonder if all the fornicating I’m getting is worth all the fornicating I’m getting.” The audience dies every time, for good reason, but this time I was also crying laughing because I remember – someone from high school correct me if I’m wrong but I remember – that our HS production did NOT cut that line. Is that possible?!
 
Faring pretty well was Tessa Kadler as Catherine, more commonly the thankless role in “Pippin” unless you have someone who knows what they’re doing, and then it can be absolutely sublime. I never knew that Catherine could be the funniest and fullest role in the show until I saw Rachel Bay Jones in the Broadway revival, when she completely reinvented the role and all future interpretations were challenged to keep up. Unfortunately, few can really keep up with her, and even fewer have the comedic brilliance that’s required to make Catherine more than a well-meaning, pretty love interest. I could honestly talk about RBJ’s genius in that truly virtuosic performance for days on end. Needless to say, she ruined me for future performances that fail to mine the lines for all the brilliance they could possess. Tessa’s Catherine fared better than most, and she has a beautiful voice, but none of the nuance was there to make Catherine special. More importantly, it was not clear at all that the actors playing Catherine and Pippin in the show-within-the-show were falling in love, not at all. My husband, seeing “Pippin” for the first time, asked afterwards “wait why would she have left with him?” There was no reason for her to have joined Pippin at the end, at least as far as we saw.
 
And that ending is always so tricky to get right, because it is so unbelievably dark and sinister. The chorus sounded great on the Finale number, and it was creepy as hell as they tried to get Pippin to take part in the one final act that will make him extraordinary. It’s always fascinating to see how this comes across. Sometimes, the ending tells you that despite the grandest of dreams, a person will only be truly happy living an ordinary life that has real meaning instead of larger-scale meaning. Sometimes, it’s that you can’t expect too much of yourself or your life, and that doing so will probably have the opposite consequences than you intend, and sometimes it’s that you can’t give in to the basest desires that flood your subconscious. And sometimes you think um this is coming across as extra-pro suicide. Here, it definitely felt more along the lines of Pippin having to quiet the visions, the fantasies he always had that told him he was so special and so needed to do something obviously special. He needed to learn to ignore the dark places in his imagination and be content with a normal life, and only then, when he stopped expecting so much of himself, could he be happy. Overall, it worked, although again there was no foundation for having Catherine help ground him. It still was moving as ever, and because of the black box situation, I REALLY hoped we would get the original ending – when Pippin and Catherine just stand there in the dark in their underwear talking to each other, and it ends so abruptly and the audience is like, wait whatttttt? That can’t be the end?? That’s the ending we did in high school and it still makes me laugh so hard to imagine what on earth those poor audiences were thinking. But more recent shows have added a truly remarkable ending, in which the little boy playing Theo starts singing “Corner of the Sky”, and the Leading Player and the troupe come back in to encircle him, having found a new potential Pippin to finish their finale for them. It’s FREAKING DARK, and it works so well because it ends on music but still has the incredibly disturbing troubling mood. BUT, I think it really only works well when it’s a child playing Theo. Here it was just one of the regular ensemble members, adult-sized, playing Theo, so it didn’t pack the normal punch that that ending is good for. Also, when the players remove all the ‘theatre magic’ in a black box theatre, well there’s not much to differentiate it when they come back. There are no sets to begin with, so they kind of just made the lights dimmer. It didn’t work as well. It is the better ending though, so whatever it’s fine, but I just wanted to be able to witness an audience deal with the dissatisfaction of the original ending.
 
Overall, it was a well done production and definitely worth seeing, if it left me wanting to see a full mounted production again soon. And mostly, it reminded me of how great “Pippin” is, when even down to its bare bones, as here, it’s still enjoyable and poignant.
 
AUDIENCE
The audience was fine! Huzzah! It helps to be almost in the round in a small room, so everyone knows I’m watching them.