By William Hong

From '70s pop to contemporary hip-hop, Stephen Schwartz's classic Pippin gets an anime make-over from East West Players.

When Wicked arrived and made a huge splash in LA over a year ago, East West Players director Tim Dang realized that with the musical's success, it would be a good opportunity to revive another musical composed by Stephen Schwartz, Pippin. The musical follows Charlemagne's eldest son, Pippin, who embarks on a journey to discover his true calling in life. Although set in medieval Europe, the language was contemporary and the music was 1970s pop rock. Pippin, which won Schwartz a Tony Award three decades ago, has already been redone countless times around the world. But Dang had a unique vision for Pippin: to adapt it into an anime hip-hop musical in hopes of drawing in younger audiences. Instead of reusing the European setting, his vision incorporated anime, martial arts, and samurai set in feudal Japan.

His first challenge was to pitch the idea to Schwartz himself. "Stephen Schwartz is a very supportive person. He realizes the show has been around a long time and has been done so many different ways. When I pitched the idea of doing an anime hip-hop version, he was all for the anime idea. He visualized a style from the Japanese feudal era. He could also see the anime style done, because the original production was way out there in terms of costumes.

"He did pause and had to think about hip-hop part, because he didn't hear hip-hop in his music."

With Schwartz not completely convinced that his music could make the transition from 70s pop to hip-hop, it was up to musical director Marc Maclintal to meet the challenge. "I was actually very excited to create a new eye-opening experience for the audience. You hear a lot of hip-hop music on TV and commercials, so it's already out there. Putting that contemporary sound into Pippin's score was exciting."

Wanting to ensure the score's original feel remained intact, Maclintal didn't write any new music -- the melodies and lyrics are the same. Instead, the instrumentation was adapted to have a contemporary feel. Maclintal cited The Roots and The Beastie Boys, hip-hop groups that use live instruments in their performances, as his primary influences. He enlisted the help of a guitar player and drummer to perform offstage. DJ Linotype's hip-hop beats and vinyl scratching accompanied the new instrumentation.

To get a better feel for Dang's vision for the musical, Maclintal had to do research. He listened to the soundtrack to the anime Samurai Champloo, which features distinct hip-hop music from American producer Fat Jon and Japanese R&B artist Nujabes. He also watched several episodes of Samurai Champloo, which he describes as "dark and understated with a lot of subtext and beautiful visualizations."

In fact, Dang used the anime as inspiration for multiple aspects of the production.

"We looked at Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop as the basis [for Pippin]. Samurai Champloo has a hip hop aesthetic. Once all the other designers got involved, we also looked at Bleach (which has a successful rock musical adaptation in Japan) and Naruto for further inspiration. Once we finished casting, the biggest challenge was to get the performers to think of themselves as anime characters that are totally made up and fantastical."

Dang also instructed his performers to watch the anime-inspired Matrix trilogy. He specifically wanted the low-key, understated acting style from the movies to be the basis for his performers. It wasn't an easy adjustment, as Dang noted that many of his performers were acclimated to the high energy typical of the musical genre. One of the key characters in the play is The Leading Player, who serves as a kind of narrator who orchestrates events for Pippin. Ben Vereen himself catapulted himself to stardom as the original Leading Player 30 years ago through an unforgettably flashy and energetic performance. Marcus Choi, who plays The Leading Player in this version, had to change his habits to make the adjustment.

"We had to break ourselves of those impulses to be larger-than-life characters. One thing Tim told us was to play it deadpan serious," Choi says.

Choi, whose understated performance and dark trenchcoat channel Morpheus from the Matrix, also saw similarities between The Leading Player and Samurai Champloo's cast.

"I've been watching Samurai Champloo and there's this ronin samurai character named Jin who is deadpan and almost emotionless. It's a juxtaposition to this other character named Mugen, who is a loud, boisterous, in-your-face samurai. The Leading Player is almost like a balance between the two."

In contrast to his performers' subdued acting, Dang was far less restrained with the play's visuals.

"We have a large projection screen in the back. We have a moving background. The costumes and make-up are very anime. Hair plays a significant role in the look of anime characters, so we have people with purple, blue, orange, and spiky hair. The makeup is all very contoured, to make the eyes pop out and cheek bones pronounced. The lighting designer put in saturated to make the scenes look blue or green and have this otherworldly feel."

When asked if he was concerned that this adaptation geared towards younger audiences would alienate older audiences and fans of the original Pippin, Dang was optimistic.

"Hopefully they will come to enjoy the music and be open-minded enough to see a reinterpretation as opposed to seeing the exact same show. What we did was take a risk that the audience would be open to this interpretation. It seems like the first-timers and older generation are both enjoying the musical on their own terms."

How did the most important critic, who attended opening night, react to this radical makeover? According Dang, Schwartz enjoyed the new spin. After the opening night performance, Schwartz approached Maclintal with curiosity.  

"Schwartz came up to me after the show. He asked a lot of questions. He wanted to know about the live sounds. After Stephen saw the play on opening night, he understood in terms of contemporizing how his music was changed."

Dang also was also proud to note that his version of Pippin was special in more ways than just from an audio-visual standpoint.

"When Stephen Schwartz came opening night, I believe it was the first time he had seen Pippin performed by an Asian American cast."

With the success of his experiment, Dang is already planning the next step for this new musical style.

"One of our next projects in the future is to find some kind of anime story that's already out there or create a new anime-style story to turn it into an anime hip-hop musical."

Pippin runs at the David Henry Hwang theatre in Los Angeles, CA until June 22nd. For more information, see their website here (http: //www.eastwestplayers.org/pippin.htm).

Published: Friday, May 30, 2008