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Pippin, Garden Theatre, review: a fresh burst of vitality that deserves further life indoors

Wide-eyed: Ryan Anderson as Pippin is hypnotic  - Alastair Muir
Wide-eyed: Ryan Anderson as Pippin is hypnotic - Alastair Muir

With its large cast and fiendish technical requirements, who knows what’s in store for the long-running mega-hit Wicked, albeit tickets still remain on sale for its run at the Apollo Victoria from November. In the meantime, there’s a welcome nod to the wizardry of its composer Stephen Schwartz in the far more pocket-sized shape of Pippin (the 1972 follow-up to his breakthrough Godspell) which gets a joyous al fresco outing in Vauxhall, deploying a cast of just six with industrious keyboard accompaniment (Michael Bradley).

There were groans of critical despair at one of the last major London revivals of the show (which has never found the favour here that it first achieved on Broadway). In 2011, attempts were made at the Menier Chocolate Factory to re-frame the comic, freewheeling tale of a restless medieval prince (nominally son of King Charlemagne, but historical facts are scant) for the cyber age. Director Steven Dexter wisely keeps the whole thing in its hippy-trippy period, feasting the senses with a colourful riot of tie-dyed material, fairy-lights and flares, incense smoke wafting across the Garden Theatre’s intimate courtyard space to mingle with an aura of hallucinogenic abandon.

Initially conceived as a college project, with the Vietnam War and late Sixties counter-culture evident reference-points, the piece (condensed here to a fleet 80 minutes) articulates a young man’s angst about his place in the world (plus ça change). Pippin, played by Ryan Anderson with a hypnotic wide-eyed curiosity, is too bookish for the battle-field, can’t cope running the kingdom, isn’t so wild about sex, and settles for a life less extraordinary after trying to save a duck belonging to his lover’s son. On the surface it barely makes sense, yet the underlying spirit (of necessary journeying, and final, standalone acceptance) coheres. The knowing daftness offsets the schmaltzy wisdom.

After such a stymying year, the evening offers a vital shot of life-affirming freshness, determination and energy (Nick Winston’s choreography is a minor miracle of compact writhing, springing and contorting with due nods to Bob Fosse’s original template of jerky-limbs and synchronised archness). It deserves a further run indoors, not least because so many of the recruited performers are top-notch.

Recently seen as Tina Turner in the West End, Tsemaye Bob-Egbe shines as the ‘Leading Player’, soulfully blasting out the carpe diem maxim of Simple Joys – “Time’s a living prize” – while Strictly winner Joanne Clifton has a ball as a wisecracking grandmother offering much the same advice: “Oh, it’s time to start livin’… For when your best days are yester/ The rest ‘er twice as dear”. Absolutely of its period, then, but entirely fitting for Covid-benighted 2020.

Until Oct 11. Tickets: gardentheatre.co.uk