[I'm on vacation until November 18, so my friends are looking after The Critical Condition. Now it's time for Adam Roberts, who runs the amazing food blog The Amateur Gourmet and who wrote the book of the same name. Today, Adam describes the pleasures of watching "Pippin" on DVD.]

On page 54 of my book The Amateur Gourmet (now in paperback), I write: “I can’t shake off my Jewishness any more than I can shake off my wholehearted love for Pippin on DVD.”

How this sentence survived the scrutiny of my editor, my copy editor and my agent, I don’t know—it is a food book, after all—but there the sentence is, flaunting what some would consider my bad taste to all the world.

But here’s the thing: I stand by that sentence more than any other sentence in the book. Not only can’t I shake off my love for Pippin on DVD, I absolutely refuse to: it’s one of the greatest things I own. If my apartment were on fire I’d save my computer, my cat and Pippin on DVD.

After the jump, I’ll share the reasons  I love Pippin on DVD (and why you should love it too).

1. Bob Fosse.

I’ll be the first to admit, Pippin is a poorly written musical.

The book falls apart pretty quickly, because Pippin’s character doesn’t know what he wants. As Neil Simon once said (and I paraphrase or, more likely, misquote): “A play is only as good as how badly the main character wants something.”

Pippin wants to find his corner of the sky. That’s his “I want” song at the beginning of the show. It’s a pretty vague thing to want and consequently, the show is pretty vague.

“What’s Pippin about, anyway?” my boyfriend Craig asked me one day. It’d be a reasonable question if he’d never seen the DVD, but since I’d already shown it to him I found the question alarming.

“Pippin is about a guy who doesn’t know what he wants,” I replied, heatedly. “That’s the point of the show; it’s about him trying to figure out his life.” It was a weak defense, and that’s because it’s a weak show on paper.

But on DVD it’s marvelous, infectious, mesmerizing; and that’s entirely because of director and choreographer Bob Fosse.

It’s easy to praise Fosse for his masterworks, namely the films Cabaret and All That Jazz. There, the darkness of the material fits his aesthetic: Give him Nazis, give him drug addiction, give him abortion, give him hospital wards, and he’s right at home. But give him a medieval court with a singing king, dancing jesters and Martha Raye from those dentures commercials, and he’s got his work cut out for him.

Which is why his achievement with Pippin is so significant. Fosse takes light, shallow material and gives it depth. The stage is a black canvas and the figures enter and exit mysteriously; when Pippin sings “Corner of the Sky,” the other actors mockingly clap; when Pippin explores sex, Fosse creates a dance sequence worthy of Hieronymous Bosch, both grotesque and alluring. The stage is always alive: When Chita Rivera belts the lame song “Kind of Woman”, she’s in front of a backdrop of kingly faces. As she manipulates Pippin and the King, the kingly faces come alive, rolling their eyes in condescension. When Martha Raye sings her big number, a giant scroll with the lyrics fills the stage and a beam of light encourages the audience to sing along.

Fosse digs deeply into his theatrical bag of tricks, but they’re good tricks. This show is many things-frustrating, sophomoric, naïve-but it’s never boring. In fact, it’s pretty delightful.

The credit goes to Bob Fosse, for sure, but it also goes to one other person… the other reason I love Pippin.

2. Ben Vereen

Ben Vereen’s performance as The Leading Player (a sinister M.C.) is legendary.

I know it’s legendary because Jiminy Glick (another favorite of mine) once said: “I’m sweatier than Ben Vereen in Pippin.”

Ben Vereen is sweaty in Pippin. He’s also extraordinary. He’s crisp, he’s suave, he’s slinky, he’s mischievous, and he’s got more energy than an entire Olympic rowing team. Seriously: He carries the whole show. When he walks on stage, it’s electric. He effortlessly channels Fosse’s wicked energy into a masterful performance; part M.C. from Cabaret, part James Brown.

The number to end all numbers in Pippin, the one that best showcases the Fosse/Vereen collaboration, is “Glory.” It’s Fosse’s dark vision of war, violence and death, and lucky for us, the whole number is up on YouTube:

And that, my friends, is why I love Pippin.

Well… Re-reading what I’ve written, I think I need to give some credit to Stephen Schwartz’s score. I have mixed feelings about Schwartz; he’s responsible for my least favorite song in the history of musical theater (“Dancing Through Life” from Wicked, which is the dictionary definition of insipid), but his score for Pippin, like his score for Godspell, captures a specific late-70s sound that invokes purity, optimism, incense, peppermints, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. As a fan of that brand of 70s music, I find Pippin’s non-cutesy songs (“Love Song” as opposed to “War Is A Science”) eminently listenable.

Also, this needs to be said: William Katt, The Greatest American Hero, who plays Pippin on DVD is hot. And he spends much of the production with his shirt off.

So please, give Pippin on DVD a chance. Thank you, Mark, for letting me write about my most cherished pop culture artifact!