Magic to Do: Pippin’s Fantastic, Fraught Journey to Broadway and Beyond

A 1972 musical takes shape amid clashing outsize personalities in journalist Gardner’s fizzy debut. Pippin, which follows the medieval misadventures of King Charlemagne’s son, enjoyed an initial five-year run on Broadway and many revivals, its success due less to its theme of youthful questing and composer Stephen Schwartz’s forgettable pop score (the New Yorker called the music “competent but not very interesting”) than to director and choreographer Bob Fosse’s dazzling production and sensational dance numbers (one routine featured chorus members representing soldiers who left fake body parts strewn across the stage). Gardner meticulously details Pippin’s first production, but the narrative is dominated by Fosse, who made changes that Schwartz thought to be “cheap, vulgar humor” (for example, he added the suffix “hole” to a line where a character calls another man an ass), juggled affairs with cast members, and had substance abuse issues (cast member Candy Brown recalls a rehearsal in which Fosse made them “move one finger back and forth” for hours because he was “on something”). The narrative loses steam when Gardner dispenses cursory rundowns of revivals, but readers will stick around for the meaty depiction of Fosse. Broadway buffs will fall under the spell of this showbiz saga. Photos. (Nov.)