Porchlight's 'Nine' Nearly a Ten

What's that, you say? You're not all that familiar with this musical called Nine, even though it won five Tony Awards in 1982, defeating a little show called "Dreamgirls" for Best Musical and for Best Score? (That production starred Raul Julia, Liliane Montevecchi, Karen Akers and Anita Morris, by the way.) You heard that Nine won the Best Musical Revival Tony (something else "Dreamgirls" never did) in 2003, in a production that starred Antonio Banderas, Chita Rivera, Mary Stuart Masterson and Jane Krakowski, didn't you?

And yet, you remain unconvinced that this Maury Yeston/Arthur Kopit show, with its ravishing Euro-classical Broadway score and searingly heart-wrenching book, is the real deal? Well, Gentle Reader, get thee to the Theatre Building in Chicago, where the much-ballyhooed Porchlight Music Theatre is presenting Nine in an extremely enjoyable, thought-provoking off-Loop production that evokes the original Tommy Tune direction and choreography of the show without attemping to emulate it. It has its own charms and rewards, and makes for a delightful afternoon or evening of mature theatergoing.

[Besides, didn't you know that at this minute a film version of the show is in the works, directed by Chicago's Rob Marshall and starring Javier Bardem, Sophia Loren, Marion Cotillard and Penelope Cruz? It's true. Due out in 2009, it should prove to be remarkable. Catch the stage version now, and do your homework in preparation for even more wonders in the world's cinemas next year.]

Nine concerns the midlife crisis of a world famous film director, Guido Contini, who bares an uncanny resemblance to Federico Fellini, upon whose film "8 1/2" the musical is based. Guido is artistically blocked, and simultaneously he struggles with romantic connections and commitments. His wife, Luisa, his mistress Carla, and his ex-co-star and ex-mistress Claudia are the three women who occupy most of Guido's thoughts as his 40th birthday looms, but his producer, his mother, a prostitute from his boyhood and various other women from his life populate the stage as well. He tries to come up with the script for his next (overdue) film while vacationing at a spa in Venice, under the watchful scrutiny of the world's press and paparazzi.

Lovely songs such as "My Husband Makes Movies," "Only With You," "Nine," "Be On Your Own" and "Getting Tall" alternate with the rousing yet thoroughly unique songs "Not Since Chaplin," "Guido's Song," "A Call From the Vatican," "Follies Bergere," "Be Italian" and the daring, tricky "The Grand Canal" sequence, all pulled off by the cast with considerable aplomb here. There are so many musical riches, rendered effectively if a little thinly by the orchestra of five, led by Musical Director/Conductor Eugene Dizon.

One conceit of this production is that Guido and his nine-year-old self are the only two males in the cast (the other boys who portray young Guido's schoolmates were eliminated from this lean cast of thirteen). This yields a singing and dancing chorus, and an acting ensemble, of nothing but jawdroppingly beautiful women (costumed to perfection in various "little black dresses" by Bill Morey). Not a chorus boy or Broadway baritone in sight here, just the cream of Chicago's off-Loop distaff talent, making the most of their days in the sun.

They are led by the cool yet passionate, smart and real Heather Townsend as Luisa, one of those women who was a "fabulous babe" when she was younger, and for whom any middle-aged straight man would willingly give his eyeteeth, were his head not perpetually below the belt. Townsend also sings in a throaty and sophisticated style, and goes about the business of sorting through her character's marital dysfunction in the public eye with confidentiality and aplomb. Marie Svedja-Groh displays the best singing voice in the cast as Claudia, delivering a lovely and wistful "Unusual Way," but could use more charisma to fully inhabit the part of a famous film star, lured out of domestic bliss by the promise of work to stretch her acting chops and re-establish her artistic integrity.

The real find of this production is Cassandra Liveris as Carla, who has stepped into Porchlight's production on extremely short notice and made the role fully her own. Sexy almost beyond belief, very convincingly Italian, girlish yet urbane, Liveris is something remarkable to behold in a role which in less capable hands, breasts and hips (much less brains) could become either thanklessly stereotypical, or a carbon copy of its two most visible prior inhabitants, Miss Morris and Miss Krakowski. She is neither of them, and who cares? Watch out!  She can only get better as the show's run continues. The earthquake you hear resounding down Belmont Avenue is the earth hailing the arrival of a new force of nature.

Among the other women in the show, Danielle Brothers as the producer, Liliane, and Bethany Thomas as the "voluptuous whore," Sarraghina, are shown to much better advantage in these naturally showy roles than they were during their appearance in another musical seen locally this season. The rest of the women are all uniformly good: Kristen Freilich, Brigitte Ditmars, Vanessa Greenway, Christin P. Bouletter, Jennifer Grubb and Abigail Trabue. Bravas all around!

Ah, but what about the Guidos? The wiry, sexy and explosive actor Jeff Parker (also in all black, and not much of it) makes the adult man a funny, charismatic, really believable, and oddly empathic figure, tearing his own world down due to lack of self control and grown-up levelheadedness, surviving through panic and sheer will. And Parker has no trouble conjuring the entire show out of his head, a film director who paints a movie in his mind for the theater audience and endures a genuinely scary breakdown against the stark back wall of the theater—everyone he has ever tried to love leaves him, alone with his now-failing creative imagination.

Despite his frequent adolescent and lustful moves toward his own crotch (the women move there frequently as well), Guido's greatest love may be for his younger self, and this love is touchingly portrayed and truly, sweetly heartfelt in Parker's performance.

And what a younger self! Matthew Gold as Young Guido possesses the most disarming smile you ever saw on the face of a child actor, throws a mean cartwheel two feet from audience members and seems like an authentic kid, playing Cowboys and Indians with a water pistol even as he wonders what mysteries a woman's body contains. His lack of vocal purity renders him that much more real. This young man could have a golden future as a performer, and hopefully will remain as unaffected and as affecting as he now seems.

Director L. Walter Stearns has made some interesting choices with this production, which in superficial ways more closely resembles the 2003 Broadway revival than it does the 1982 original production. For one thing, the original looked like it took place in a bathroom, and Porchlight's production has no white in it at all, save for a one prop which may very well win an award called "The Most Creative Use of a Rolling Bathtub." The set (by Kevin Depinet) features an oversized classical or Renaissance nude upstage like the revival did, but unlike David Leveaux's production Porchlight's show is not obsessed with running water.

It does include a number of chairs, however, but Stearns uses them in a way which (unlike Leveaux's concept) seemed to me a nod to that other Tune/Yeston/Akers musical, "Grand Hotel."  The cast seemed poised to watch the action unfold while seated upstage of the playing area, but that conceit was thankfully not maintained throughout the entire evening.

Other points to note are the fact that the show apparently has been updated to the present, which I deduced from the omnipresence of cell phones in the performers' hands, and the fact that actors playing the Germans at the spa, as well as the song named for those Germans, ("The Germans At the Spa," natch) have been dropped here, to negligible damage. In a very wise touch, the original concept of the women of the cast acting as an orchestra (with Guido as their conductor) has been replaced by Stearns with the rather sensible notion that these women are actors on a film set, with Guido as their director! (Sometimes you don't need a metaphor, you just need to depict the obvious, I suppose.)

The lighting, by Julian H. Pike, and sound design, by Kevin Carney, seemed fine if unremarkable, and the choreography (by Brenda Didier) seemed just right and unobtrusive, which probably means it is top-drawer and seamlessly integrated. The dialect coaching by Eva Breneman seemed fine, but begs the question as to why it is necessary.

Everyone in the show, except I suppose for Liliane La Fleur, is an Italian in a show which takes place in Italy, so you would think that these characters would just sound as neutral (i.e. Standard American English) speakers to each other, and also to the audience, with Liliane sporting a French accent. But if American audiences conceive of authentic Italians as having Italian accents, then I guess I will let it slide. The danger of veering into operatic territory, and operatic stiffness, must be counteracted by those little black dresses! And during "The Grand Canal," which contains some pretty long opera pastiche music and some pretty terrific historical-looking costumes, the accents probably help maintain a unity of style. So, I withdraw my objection. The accents are very well executed, and clearly articulated.

Overall, then this Nine rates a nine in my book. I wish the cast were larger in the musical and spectacle climaxes, the orchestra bigger in the lush romantic mood music, and the lighting and sound more filled with awe and wonder. But these are minor quibbles. Who could object to intelligent, passionate and committed performances by talented and experienced singing actors in a literate, relevant and life-affirming musical? Accent or no accent.

Nine has the winning number. Catch it, so you can say to next year's moviegoers that of course you've seen the stage show, and you've been wondering for years when the movie was coming out. Your chance is here now. You will love it.

Nine presented by Porchlight Music Theatre runs on weekends at the Theatre Building, 1225 W. Belmont Avenue in Chicago, through May 18, 2008. Visit www.theatrebuildingchicago.org for tickets, and www.porchlighttheatre.com for more information.

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