Theater Review – ‘Nine’
Produced by: Theatre Three – Port Jefferson
Reviewed by: Jeb Ladouceur
Sometimes theatrical projects that we undertake with blind conviction as teenagers, actually turn out to be the roaring successes we’d dreamed of. Such accomplishments are rare, of course … after all, few if any in the heady profession known as show business can legitimately wear the mantel of a Mozart, Merman, or Mark Twain. But in 1963, aspiring young composer/lyricist, Maury Yeston, became obsessed with Federico Fellini’s semi-autobiographical film ‘8½,’ and twenty years after initially viewing it, he (with the help of master director Tommy Tune) turned the motion picture into a boffo Broadway musical.
Yeston named his production simply ‘Nine’ … a number prophetically three short of the dozen Tony nominations (five of which resulted in wins) that the show ran off with in 1982. Add ten Drama Desk Award nominations (seven wins) and we’re talking about a smash musical by anybody’s reckoning.
As we now know, 729 performances at Broadway’s 46th Street Theatre followed, after which the play was taken on tour in this country … opened internationally in London, Sweden, and Australia … and was revived to wide acclaim by New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company in 2003. The wonder of it all is that until the show’s stage debut in the eighties, composer and Yale alum Yeston had never anticipated that his ambitious project would effectively provide anything but his own satisfaction.
‘Nine’ centers on noted film director Guido Contini (played wonderfully by Brian Gill) and his search for a plot suitable to his upcoming movie. Not surprisingly, the film is to be a musical treatment of Giacomo Casanova’s life and his legendary womanizing in the eighteenth century … though it must be noted that our Guido is as much the romantically pursued during the amorous proceedings, as he is the reluctant pursuer. Frequently, this situation lands Contini in something of a pickle (there’s a tawdry joke in there somewhere) … indeed, we see that all the demands made by a virtual squadron of insistent honeys would undoubtedly have proven too much for a less gifted Lothario than Guido to accommodate.
Ah, me. What’s a poor matinee idol to do?
Well, if anyone would know, it would be Brian Gill. While co-starring with Tracylynn Conner in Theatre Three’s 2017 production of ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ the 160-year-old stage fairly sizzled as, under Jeffrey Sanzel’s direction, Conner and Gill found the chemistry required for that heartbreaking love story. Now, the Maestro has paired the two once again, and the match, though significantly less tension-filled this time, proves that ‘Bridges’ intensity was no fluke.
By the same token, ‘Nine’ is no ‘Bridges of Madison County,’ … for few plays can match the brief Francesca Johnson-Robert Kinkaid saga for pure simpatico.
Though it might be said that both stories have to do with the phenomenon which Canadian psychoanalyst Elliott Jacques originally termed, ‘Midlife Crisis,’ (and suggested that all of us experience it between the ages of 45 and 64) in ‘Nine’ Guido Contini gets a dose of the malady that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. In younger years, healthy males might think it heaven-sent to be chased by an endless bevy of breathtaking beauties, but ‘Nine’ puts the lie to that notion in no uncertain terms. Accordingly, what might have been viewed as a naughty little titillating show, is transformed by Sanzel et al into a compelling comment on human behavior.
All of the performances in this rather deep musical are quite good, and the cast is treated to a perfect, pastel set (Randall Parsons), appropriate costumes and lighting (Ronald Green III and Robert W. Henderson, Jr.), and some of the sweetest musical accompaniment (veteran Jeffrey Hoffman directs) to which we are likely to be treated this theater season. In the final analysis, it is the incomparable Brian Gill for whom it might be said this difficult piece of unforgettable theater could have been written … and the magnetic Linda May (Guido’s mother) whose consummate playacting commands our attention from first to last, deserves all the stars we’ve got.
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Award-winning writer, Jeb Ladouceur is the author of a dozen novels, and his theater and book reviews appear in several major L.I. publications. His recent hit, THE GHOSTWRITERS, explores the bizarre relationship between the late Harper Lee and Truman Capote. Ladouceur’s topical thriller, THE SOUTHWICK INCIDENT, was introduced at the Smithtown Library on May 21st. The book involves a radicalized Yale student and his CIA pursuers. Mr. Ladouceur’s revealing website is www.JebsBooks.com