‘Pippin’ goes to the circus
More than three decades after the musical “Pippin” closed on Broadway after a long run, a re-imagined production is set to return to the Great White Way this spring under the direction of the American Repertory Theater’s (A.R.T.) artistic director Diane Paulus. And this production brings the circus to town. Paulus’ revamped vision of the show by Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson, which concludes its Cambridge run on Jan. 20, fuses the high-flying, Montreal-based circus troupe Les 7 Doigts de la Main with the high-octane choreography inspired by the show’s original director, Broadway dance legend Bob Fosse. For Paulus, whose operating ethos is about expanding the boundaries of theater, the musical’s plot, which centers on a young man’s search for the extraordinary and his interactions with some mysterious traveling performers, spelled one thing: the big top. “I realized that the theme at the core of Pippin’s journey could be viscerally expressed through...