Andrea Martin Joins Cast of \'Pippin\' Revival

October 10, 2012, 2:06 pm

By PATRICK HEALY

The comedienne and Tony Award-winning actress Andrea Martin (“My Favorite Year,” “Young Frankenstein”) will return to the stage later this year as the scene-stealing grandmother Berthe in “Pippin,” the 1972 musical that is receiving a fresh staging at the American Repertory Theater and being watched closely by Broadway producers.

On Wednesday the A.R.T. announced full casting for the show, which will star the British theater actor Matthew James Thomas, who has spent the last two years playing Peter Parker at some performances of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” on Broadway. (Another young actor, Damon Daunno, played Pippin in the A.R.T. workshop for the production this summer.) The “Pippi n” cast will also include the Tony-nominated actors Patina Miller (“Sister Act”) as the Leading Player, who narrates the show, and Terrence Mann (“Les Misérables”) and Charlotte d'Amboise (“A Chorus Line”) as Pippin's father, King Charles, and his wife Fastrada, Pippin's cruel stepmother. (Mr. Mann and Ms. d'Amboise are married in real life.)

Preview performances are set to begin on Dec. 5 at the A.R.T. in Cambridge, Mass., and run through Jan. 20, 2013.

New York theater producers have been following the development of “Pippin” and consider it a possibility to transfer to Broadway, given that it has not been performed there since the original five-year run ended in 1977. (Irene Ryan, Granny in “The Beverly Hillbillies” played Berthe in the original, which made a star out of Ben Vereen as the Leading Player.)

A spokeswoman at the A.R.T. did not respond to an e-mail asking if any Broadway producers had put money into the A.R.T. production in return for the chance to transfer it to Broadway.

The “Pippin” revival is a collaboration between Diane Paulus, the Tony-nominated director of “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess” (which began at the A.R.T. last year), and the Montreal circus company Les 7 Doigts de la Main (or 7 Fingers). “Pippin” has music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (“Wicked”) and a book by Roger O. Hirson.