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WPCNR ON THE AISLE. Theatre Review By John F. Bailey. April 2, 2010 Complete with Pictures!: Cue the glamour, cue the high-maintenance beauties, light the flattering lights, cue the enigmatic, emotional, charismatic dashing star, Westchester Broadway Theatre’s spring show, Nine (the 5-Tony Award-winning toast of Broadway in 1982) revives evocably a bold musical of the Broadway that was then and the movie world of the 1960s and, ironically today.. Nine is all about women and the man they love even though they never quite really have him, and their irresistible attraction to the artist.
Guido and the Women in his Life:
Robert Cuccioli with the high maintenance women on stage at Westchester Broadway Theatre until April 24: Front to back Emily Zacharias as his mother; Julie Tolivar as his mistress; Dana Moore as his producer; Glory Crampton as his wife, Luisa; Lauren Blackman as his actress; Jesmille Darbouze; Erin O’Neill.
Photos by John Vecchiolla, Courtesy, WBT
The women peforming the Follies Bergere spectacular in Act One
Robert Cuccioli “The First Leading Man of Westchester Theatre” is the great Guido Contini a director-in-demand, whose mere association with a film sends producers to writing checks and starlets slipping out of their sheaths (in the most irresistible way) for him, which he is only too glad to succumb to in a musical of two levels, the emotional and the rational.
It is a glam show with nine beautiful, leggy, tempestuous and high maintenance women reminiscent of the Cardinales, Ekbergs, Lorens, and Lolobridgidas of a once and seductive time–the not-so-innocent mid- twentieth century. The ladies are great for the men to look at.
Guido conducts his women, Act One.
Men in front row seats should be warned to exercise self-control to keep from climbing on stage during the performance of Guido’s mistress, the stage-dominating redhead for the ages, Julie Tolivar, above, singing Call from the Vatican, where Guido talks on the phone in front of his wife, pretending he is talking to the Vatican, when he is talking to Ms. Tolivar. This number should have been titled “Ode to the Leotard,” and is one of the highlights of the first Act.
Guido, instrospecting, observing at right, goes back in time, recalling the women who have influenced his life. Here one of his teachers, Cari Chrisostomou as Serraghina, conducts Guido’s class, clockwise from left,Zach Rand, Adrian Nobile, Troy Tripicchio, John Carlos Lefkowitz, Ryan Jones, Travis Ramirez, performing Be Italian at the end of Act One.
Nine is a string of clever introspective ballads,laments, and lampoon blockbuster production numbers portraying the emotional highs and pitfalls an entertainment icon faces when everyone wants a piece of you. You want to please them all and you’ve made your life a giant ponzi scheme taking, giving, borrowing, and deluding, not necessarily in that order.
Cuccioli (as Guido), a representation of a great director, finds himself at the pinnacle of his career. He has had a creative crisis and he has tucked himself away at a spa to recharge. The setting recreates the dream sequence in Federico Fellini’s movie, 8 ½ where Guido dreams about his relationships with the women in his life: He still wants them all.
Here are the actresses and poseurettes and entouragettes of Hollywood past. They evoke the days when ladies who played were always ladies, even when they were being played. They always held out for the leading man, even when he was playing them.
Ahhh, those were the days, so simple, so scripted, so according to plan, when mental cruelty and incredulity and suspension of belief was, oh, so acceptable and easy. Guido deals with all the ladies, and through the ladies’ songs and his reactions, each character explains away their behaviors and flaws that link them together always.
For the ladies in the WBT house, the ultimate leading Italian man, the quintessential heartthrob, The Great Cuccioli emotes with controlled style. He invites “all-too-willing-to-console” feelings. He is the man women want to be needed by. He has the cache, the sophistication, the enigma that fascinates a woman, more than any mortal man especially whoever you’re married to at any one time. At least the movies would have you think so. Fellini’s anyway.
The women in the audience shake their heads in disapproval while they admire Mr. Cuccioli’s dominating conflicted personna.
“Ahhh, they would save him, I can change him because he loves me.”
Cuccioli has that effect and emobies the rationalization of the man who is committed, but not really. He cannot consider other commitments from those who also want him. He is conflicted.
The musical strength and conceit is it sends a message wrapped in a sheath dress, one of those “Moralicals with a Mission.” It satisfies the more cerebral theatre-goer with more than mind candy and hummy tunes. Nine sends up the art film as a vehicle that builds up the filmophile’s intellectual conceit.
Nine, as 8 ½ the film did, exposes in a self-indulgent, titillating and ultimately forgiving conclusion, tinseltown and spagettiwood preoccupation with the glamour and commerce of lies, incompetence and self-delusion in the world of movies and life itself.
This musical does not roll rollickingly along, but has long pauses, reflection, like an art movie – think long,lingering fades,for example–to belabor its point.
The musical portrays, (as Fellini’s film), the roles people live destined to make them perpetually unfulfilled (except, perhaps in the bedroom, but maybe that is enough for moviedom and the characters in this award-winner).
Theirs is a world where there is no integrity, no self-respect that can’t be suppressed for the right reason. The only thing that matters between its players is what you can do for me.
The motivation that drives them is cleverly exposed in this movie “musicaled” is: what do you want me to do so you will do what I want you to do for me.
But, you forgive them. They look so good doing it.
Glory Crampton as Luisa with her straying leading man.
Guido’s elegant wife, is played with amused tolerance, statuesque class, and patrician charm by Glory Crampton whose comic nuance on My Husband Makes Movies, is performed with stylized tolerance, self-sarcasm, humor, and a “well, that’s my little Guido” apology. She fits the part, as do most of the carefully pulled-together cast.
This sure-fire plot line favorite of countless chroniclers of rich seductive harpies and sharpies in celluloid city (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanial West, Dashiell Hammett, Elia Kazan, to name just a few who pushed this genre) of the “shame and pretence of show business” is spun out cleverly, loosely based on Federico Fellini’s 8-1/2(1963) This black and whiter when color was the rage, was the breakthrough art film of the time, paving the way for a genre of films that seeing them let you acquire cocktail party prestige when you brought them up.
Nine the musical is a satire with bite, pathos, and understanding painting the false glamour, glitter and twitter of mid-twentieth century love affair with sophistication and intellectualizing the art film genre. Nine says what needs saying today: it’s great to admire creative geniuses in entertainment, but you cannot take them too seriously,and don’t marry one. They are not the most admirable of characters.
An aside, if I may?
Art film is the sobriquet that when used (even today) means you are going to see dialogue you cannot understand, with no direction, a plot with a crisis that every character talks about, does little about, and winds up drifting into doom and “unique, interesting, real” characters. Too qualify as an art film, a film is immediately considered good and critics point out its value, no matter how bad it is. Art films are characterized by “creative” camera shots, with meandering plot line that goes nowhere, enigmatic, short dialogue. A recent example of this type of film is Lost In Translation, one of the worst films of all-time that is still looking for one member in its “cult following.”(Sorry, I hate that movie.) There can be great art films, make no mistake.
Now back to the review.
Robert Cuccioli, “The First Leading Man of Westchester Theatre,” is the heart of this homage to the director as artist, not just entertainer. The revival of the Broadway Hit Nine at WBT delights with its modern villa set that through the masterful lighting of Andrew Gmoser reflects moods, the chronic “cliché” of emptiness that pervades any art film.
More a Sunset Boulevard than a 42nd Street, Nine is sophisticated entertainment the mind has to accept, consistently torn between happiness and self-realization. To borrow an in-vogue expression, it’s complicated.
There are no toe-tapping, sing-along songs to take home, but numbers cut with a double-edge close to the emotional truths of the women who adore, explore and eagerly revel in the emotions of entitlement, rationalization of behavior and redemption — delivered in clever ways that deliver an awaking of awareness, and hopefully no self-recognition. The pathos, and erratic pace is seasoned with excellent comic timing, soften the musically rendered hypocrisies of the relationships in the sycophant side of town.
This is one of Cuccioli’s toughest performances as Guido (but nice work if you can get it with the beauties of NINE), easily misunderstood if you are expecting what you remember from his roles as The Phantom on the WBT stage, and Don Quixote at White Plains Performing Arts Center.
As Guido, the legendary producer who has signed for a film that he has no idea what he is going to do in and has no script idea in mind, he draws a fine line between enthusiasm in the part and the ennui that Guido, finally running out of razzle dazzle, having promised too much to too many for too long, who is too tired is reaching for his old razzle dazzle,and it’s just not there.He’s in a panic. This is not a good thing for a creative person or writer to see because the panic is palpable.
The musical explores the self-delusion, isolation and self-pity the megalomaniacal creative type uses to rationalize his behavior when he is consistently insecure. To avoid the demand, he looks for distraction, an idea or a mistress. For years he has been able to convince so many how wonderful his art is, and suddenly it’s no longer going so well.
When things do not go right, and his new shrew of a producer with her dominating wonderfully comic dominitrix of an assistant puts the pressure on, he snaps. He has in the past, always been able to convince the critics, his (or her, after all today there are female Glorias, as well as Guidos, how far we have come in entertainment—but that’s another column), his backers, his talent he hires and exploits in more ways than one.
Not this time. Here is what happens when ego, stature, and reputation no longer will save you.
The musical finds the Great Guido on the eve of shooting his new movie in a panic, and to avoid grappling with the problem he retreats to a spa, where he remembers the women in his life, his mother, his wife, his mistress, an actress, while dealing with the demands of a female backer highly suspicious of him, and trying to juggle all the women, dead and alive, who accepted him and loved him, but as it turns out they only wanted something from him.
The second act turns up the spectacular with the fabulous Grand Canal review. The magic of Venice featuring 9 different revues in one number flows seamlessly into one and sets the stage for the final plaintive ballads by Ms.Traynor as Carla, singing Simple; Ms. Crampton’s good-bye to a Guido she w ill never possess in a torch song that will sear, Be on Your Own and Mr. Cuccioli’s anguished answer, I can’t Make This Movie.
After a complex first act, confronting you with the dysfunctional, the hilarious, and the outrageous, where you do not know quite how to take this (Nine is not your 42nd Street cliché show biz musical) the second act turns up the entertainment with the fabulous Grand Canal .
Nine is not staged too often. It’s a musical with a message, that comments, observes, exposes, in a pleasant and clever way, the foibles, follies, and faiths that determine destinies. It’s a little Sunset Boulevard, a little like Company, it’s a cut above and requires your full attention: a boldly staged by the maestros of subtle effects and up-close-and-personal production, Lighting Designer Andrew Gosmer, and Director and Choreographer Jonathan Stahland sophisticatedly glamorous revival. But, the audience has to concentrate as much as the cast.
It plays the next three weeks at the WBT. For tickets to mingle with the sophisticated ladies of Nine and a real Man of La Mancha, the man women’s dreams are made of, Guido Contini. Call (914) 592-2222. They serve you dinner, too!
Cuccioli is in a role that requires virtually non-stop performing pulls it together splendidly and is given a thunderous ovation at the close
All the lovely ladies want something for themselves from the beleagured larger than life Guido, whom Mr. C., with baritone, dynamic presence and cat-like movements have captivated Westchester audiences for years. He’s a silky Sinatra with machismo, a lusty Tom Jones with subtlety, a hunky Tom Selleck with very effective and attractive 80s sensitivity.
Like Guido, in a make-believe world where nothing and no one is as they seem, he is forever young.
