‘Pippin’ star Rubinstein: Once a prince, now a king

When John Rubinstein took the title role in the original “Pippin” at 25, he knew what it was about: Wondering what path a young man could chart for himself on a journey to find out what made him – in the words of one of Stephen Schwartz’s beloved songs – “Extraordinary.”

Forty-three years later, touring with the Tony-winning revival that comes to Belk Theater Tuesday, he knows something else it’s about: Wondering, as you approach 70, what happened to all those plans.

“One thing I have always loved is that it’s a universal story,” says Rubinstein, who’s now playing Pippin’s father, the emperor Charlemagne. “It’s about a young man looking toward his future, saying, ‘I’m gonna make a mark and be rich and famous’ – which, in America, we mostly seem to think of as a life well lived, no matter how else you’ve behaved.

“It’s also about looking back and asking, ‘Did I achieve what I wanted? Did I change my mind and settle? Am I happier than I ever thought I would be?’ Older people reflect differently as they see it.”

Rubinstein can look back on a crazy quilt of a life. After his Broadway debut in “Pippin,” he won a Tony Award for best actor in his second outing: The 1980 drama “Children of a Lesser God,” as a teacher romantically drawn to a deaf former student. He wrote incidental music for Neil Simon’s underrated “Fools” and starred in it the next year.

He has scored, arranged and conducted music for films and TV shows, directed television and live theater, done stage shows – he was the first Wizard in the L.A. version of “Wicked” – and recorded more than 65 audiobooks, including 18 of Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware novels.

Then “Pippin” tugged his sleeve. Would he take over Charlemagne on Broadway, then go on tour?

He’d been well-suited to the younger role. Like Pippin, he’s the son of an internationally known father – classical pianist Arthur Rubinstein – so the bar was set high from birth. Yet he also found himself comfortable in the older role.

“One loves one’s children so much, or at least I do, and the relationship keeps changing as they grow,” he says of his five kids. “You bring this little thing home from the hospital, and every breath is an achievement. Suddenly, it’s 20 years old and has all kind of opinions you didn’t feed it. It’s telling you you’re full of ----, but you feel that same affection.

“I definitely bring that into my performance. As Charlemagne, I love my son to death. I don’t realize how insensitively I’m treating him, but I love him anyway.”

Rubinstein says he successfully resisted the temptation to tell other actors, “We did it this way in the old days,” especially as the new circus-style direction by Tony-winner Diane Paulus has changed the tone: “The most I’d do is whisper to Diane or the stage manager, ‘That moment right there, the actor is doing it like this, but you know, there’s something more to that.’ If they want to consider that, they might color the moment differently.”

What’s hardest for him?

“I throw heavy knives. They have to stick – they’re very sharp – and they don’t always stay in. You can almost touch the first row of the audience at the Music Box (where it played in New York), and one knife went off the edge of the stage. Fortunately, it didn’t enter this woman’s thigh.”

Talk of knives reminds him that the first “Pippin,” which Bob Fosse directed during the Vietnam War, was a darker musical than most theatergoers had seen.

“At that time, the draft and the war were on all three TV channels every night. We watched our guys killing their guys and theirs killing ours. We saw the napalm and the helicopters. So when we strutted onto the stage and made fun of war, there were chills in the house. Pippin’s enthusiasm for emulating his dad, who wanted to take over countries and kill everyone on sight, was eerie. The MC (Ben Vereen) danced a cute little dance, while I crossed the stage with blood dripping from my hands.

“That element is not in the show any more. Charlemagne has changed; he’s a little more of a buffoon, not the humorless guy Eric Berry played. My Charlemagne dodders and entertains the troops. He gets a lot more laughs, yet it’s even more ghoulish: He’s a funny guy who loves to kill people. I carry inside me the old ‘Pippin’ and what I feel about the piece, and I hope the darkness is still there.”

This story was originally published May 14, 2015 at 10:16 AM with the headline "‘Pippin’ star Rubinstein: Once a prince, now a king."