Pippin

By Temple Ligon

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When visiting the Capital of the World, New York City, tickets to a Broadway show justify the hassle and the expense of getting into town. The performances are just that good, but they can get a little pricey. Figure on at least $150 each for two good seats.

On the other hand, look into the prices at one of the three TKTS booths where half-price tickets are the norm. The original TKTS Broadway booth is still there in Times Square, where it’s been since 1968, the year of the beginning of the Theatre Development Fund. The TDF is the beneficiary of ticket purchases at any of the three TKTS booths. A part of each ticket sold at TKTS nurtures and sustains live theater, so you can feel good while you overdo it.

The other two booths for TKTS are in Brooklyn and on Front Street across from the South Street Seaport Museum.

My New York City Friend (NYCF) and I went to the South Street Seaport to buy our half-price tickets at the TKTS booth on Front Street. It’s near the tip of Manhattan. Front Street is where Jasper Johns and his good friend Robert Rauschenberg lived when the gallery owner Leo Castelli visited to see Flag and Target by Johns for the first time. Castelli was suitably impressed, so much so he almost immediately put together a solo show for Johns in the spring of 1958. Rauschenberg lived above Johns in the same building on Front Street, both illegally housed in a condemned building. It was free, sure, but it was also illegal.

Our theater tickets, fortunately, were street-legal. We got good seats at half-price for the musical Pippin in the Music Box Theater in the heart of Broadway. Around three in the afternoon, we paid $170 for two tickets with curtain that night at eight o’clock.

After our tickets score, we walked the High Line, a defunct elevated freight rail line, only about a mile in length but a wealth of people watching as we walked under the brutally hip Standard Hotel and through the Chelsea neighborhood, the former meatpacking district.

We also made after-theater reservations at Joe Allen Restaurant on West 46^th Street, only a couple blocks from the Music Box. I voted for Sardi’s, out-of-towner that I was, but I was outvoted by NYCF since it was her turn to pick up the tab. After all, I protested, I was staying at her place at no cost to me, eating her breakfast food and reading in her living room, and the whole thing came together without courtesy warnings to her when I decided I couldn’t give a speech on Johns the next weekend without seeing the Johns show at the Museum of Modern Art.  She was paying for it. Why the hell could I not demand my restaurant preference? Some people can’t understand.

The show Pippin has to be one of my most favorite Broadway experiences, ever. I remember when it first showed in 1972, when John Rubinstein, pianist Artur’s son, starred as Pippin. The show made a splash, lasting for 1944 performances and closing in the summer of 1977. Rubinstein is back in Pippin, now as Charlemagne, Pippin’s father. The show goes on national tour this September. A movie version is in the works at the Weinstein Company, part of Miramax.

Bob Fosse (Chicago) was the original director, and he also contributed to the libretto.

The show’s story is a coming-of-age thing, but here we’re talking about the Father of Europe and his son Pippin. Pippin’s name comes from Charlemagne’s father, Pepin the Short. Charlemagne’s grandfather, it must be noted, was Charles Martel, victor at the Battle of Tours in 732.

Charlemagne made his own name, though, at occasions like the Massacre of Verden in 782 when he ordered death to anyone who didn’t get baptized. He slaughtered 4,500 Saxons at one time, just to enforce his rule and his pro-Christian position. Pippin in the show is growing up in the middle of all this.

The show was originally conceived as a one-act affair, but the Pippin we attended had an intermission. I told NYCF I’d get in line at the bar while she went for her place to get into the ladies’ room. What could I get her? She said Coke, probably trying to stay alert and to watch my tight trip budget. Two small Cokes with plastic cups and plenty of ice, twenty bucks plus a two-dollar tip. Maybe we should have bought Coke futures at the TKTS booth.

The show’s finale was about as grand and glorious as live theater can get. We got our money’s worth.

 

 

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