Review - Nikolai and the Others & Pippin

One Chekhovian country house exits the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and a new Chekhovian country house enters. But Richard Nelson's Nikolai and the Others, enjoying an elegant staging by director David Cromer, is a more sober-minded effort than the venue's last tenant, Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike.

Actually, Nelson has been on a bit of a Chekhovian kick in the past few years with his outstanding trilogy (soon to be a tetralogy) of plays about the Apple Family of Rhinebeck, NY that have been premiering at the Public, but for this venture the playwright imports a stageful of authentic Russians - some historic, some fictional - to simmer the samovar for a weekend in a spacious Westport, CT farmhouse, beautifully realized by set designer Marsha Ginsberg.

The focal character, rather appropriately, is painted as a mediocre man. Nikolai Nabokov was a classical composer who earned some degree of notoriety, but whose success was later overshadowed by that of his cousin Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita. (Nelson's play is set in 1948, pre-dating the publication of that infamous classic.) At this point in history, Nikolai has put his music career on hold to assist the American government as an insider with the newly-formed CIA. This position grants him the luxury of being able to assist his fellow Russian émigrés who are concerned about their residential status and any suspicion that may be aimed at them during this early period of the Cold War.

By design, Nabokov is the least colorful of the major characters and is played by Stephen Kunken with a fine sense of dutiful humility. But when he is once again among artistic geniuses at work, his passionate longing to once again be a part of that world is quite moving.

That longing is ignited by the presence of choreographer George Balanchine (a virilely charismatic Michael Cerveris) and composer Igor Stravinsky (an irritable, egomaniacal John Glover) who are presenting for their fellow guests a few highlights from their new ballet, Orpheus, danced by Balanchine's wife, Native American ballerina Maria Tallchief (Natalia Alonso), and principal dancer Nicholas Magallanes (Michael Rosen).

The other purpose for the gathering is to celebrate the birthday of aging set designer Sergey Sudeikin (Alvin Epstein, occasionally gasping for life). Other notable presences include conductor Serge Koussevitsky (an obliviously self-centered Dale Place) and character actor Vladimir Sokoloff (nicely comical John Procaccino), who Hollywood utilizes as whatever foreign villain may be needed. The most prominent female presence is Blair Brown as Stravinsky's wife, who is also Sudeikin's ex.

As relationships and various plot points are revealed, the play emerges as a study of that insular group of Russian immigrants who helped make mid-20th Century American culture so vibrant and then found themselves in the precarious position of being distrusted by their adopted country and fearing deportation back to the homeland whose revolution they fled. Though the dialogue is all spoken in English, much is made of the fact that the Russian characters are mostly speaking in their native tongue. When the characters do speak in English, they do so with thick Russian accents, although this technique isn't really apparent until Cerveris puts it to use.

Parallels are suggested between the plot of Orpheus and the situation the émigrés find themselves in. The creative art that we leave behind serving as the most important evidence of our existence is eventually expressed as a major theme and the tragedy of Nikolai and the Others is that Nabokov sacrificed the opportunity to place his permanent mark in our culture by helping his fellow Russians through this precarious time.

At least in Nelson's play he gets top billing.

Photos by Paul Kolnik: Top: Natalia Alonso and Michael Cerveris; Bottom: John Glover, John Procaccino and Stephen Kunken.

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The golden era of musical theatre's director/choreographers, when artists like Gower Champion, Jerome Robbins, Michael Bennett and Bob Fosse had such complete control over the stage movement that their visuals appeared as an indelible feature to the storytelling, left us with a few musicals whose reputations somewhat surpass the effectiveness of their book, music and lyrics.

Certainly the scripted texts of Fiddler On The Roof, Hello, Dolly!, Gypsy and Chicago can stand on their own and I suspect the same discovery will be made if ever a major production of A Chorus Line is produced without adhering to Bennett's brilliant thumbprints. But when it comes to many other director/choreographer hits of that era - Redhead, Bye, Bye, Birdie, Sweet Charity, 42nd Street and even to some degrees, West Side Story and Dreamgirls - the strong visuals that inform the material and provide exacting subtext elevate the musicals to loftier achievements.

And then there's Pippin; charming, beloved Pippin, about the medieval son of King Charlemagne who goes off on a series of quests in a search for his life's meaning. Pippin's opening night reviews were not the best, but it became a smash hit by saturating television airwaves with the first ever commercial showing a scene from a Broadway musical, revolutionizing the way shows are marketed by targeting the people who do not regularly attend theatre.

What they attended was a show that, according to infamous reports that were later fictionalized in the movie All That Jazz, survived immense friction between its 24-year-old composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz, who was working on his first Broadway musical (His Godspell was, at the time, packing them in Off-Broadway.) and established hit-maker, director/choreographer Bob Fosse, who was entering the darker phase of his career and was staging the cheery, innocently naughty pop musical with layers of sinister eroticism. The Fosse version of Pippin is not what high schools and regional companies get when they license the show for performances and the popular commercial video of a live Toronto performance is said to be more of what Schwartz and bookwriter Roger O. Hirson had in mind.

But it was Fosse's dangerous seduction that fueled the original production of Pippin's artistic success. Left to its own devices, the cute but rarely clever book, as with many Candide-like stories, tends to fizzle out as the evening wears on. And while the score begins with a pair of winners ("Magic To Do" followed by "Corner of The Sky") and is highlighted by the genuinely sage and catchy "No Time At All," the bulk of the score lies on the innocuous side.

Fortunately, Diana Paulus not only provides a firm directorial hand for the new Broadway revival, but comes up with a concept that teeters between physically seductive and family friendly. The troupe of players who implore the audience to "join us" are now a collection of acrobats, aerialists, balancers and death defiers who also, quite literally, have a bit of magic to do.

With Patina Miller's Leading Player acting as ringmaster, the company members partake in feats of agility such as jumping through hoops, contorting their bodies and creating a human jump rope; all guided by Gypsy Snider, founder of Montreal's 7 Fingers circus troupe. Terrance Mann's Charlemagne performs the knife-throwing trick with Charlotte d'Amboise's Fastrada acting as target, but the real jaw-dropper comes when Andrea Martin, known far better for delivering punch lines than performing tricks in mid-air, strips off Berthe's grandmotherly garbs in the middle of her song to reveal a well-toned leotard-clad figure and, assisted by hunky chorister YanNick Thomas, dangles high above the stage on a trapeze, belting the last few bars of a chorus while hanging upside down.

While these seasoned Broadway pros, including Rachel Bay Jones as the comically sincere Catherine, perform with show-biz panache, Matthew James Thomas makes a merely capable Pippin, finding few ways to make the character's earnestness interesting.

Chet Walker's choreography, billed as "in the style of Bob Fosse" (Fosse's choreography for the "Manson Trio," made famous by that classic commercial, remains as was.) blends seamlessly in and out of Snider's creations. The sexual allure of Pippin remains, but Paulus hides it beneath the wholesomeness of athleticism, a neat trick that appropriately crumbles near the conclusion. (For those wondering, this revival uses the "Theo ending" that was added some time after the original Broadway run.)

After her mounting of Hair that focused on some of the less flattering aspects of the hippie movement and her controversially rewritten production of Porgy and Bess, Paulus' Pippin firmly establishes her as Broadway's go-to director for creating new ways to see older musicals. It would be interesting to see her get a shot at a brand new show next.

Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: Patina Miller and Matthew James Thomas; Bottom: Andrea Martin and Matthew James Thomas.

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