This topic is locked
There's already a thread imagining casting a stage revival of 'Nine', but rather than take over that thread I'm interested in the quality/qualities of this piece. I have a short but vivid memory of watching the Tony Awards when the original production was on Broadway - young as I was I was quite taken aback by a (very) young boy cavorting with women who banged him on the bottom with a tambourine! (as I remember it). I guess - having just seen the film - this was 'Be Italian'.
I think the film is an uphill struggle for audience and film-maker - the latter is rather fitting at least. Guido is such an unsympathetic character, and I work in the Arts! What would someone less frou frou make of all that self-indulgence and hand wringing over his creative block? The film makes plenty of the role of women in Italian society - the power behind the men, but only seen in kitchen or bedroom. Yet that isn't really the cause of Guido's torment for much of the film - in fact problematising it is probably a very New York perspective; he's got no reason to feel any guilt, that's the way Italian sexual politics are/were. In the film his breakdown comes when wife and muse refuse to play the game - which is interesting, but it comes at the END! Surely it would be a more interesting dramatic arc if he were in the midst of success when they turn on him? We then jump forward two years - I suggest that those unseen two years might have been more dramatically interesting than what we saw in the film, which is a set of cabaret turns with very obvious 'position statements' for lyrics rather than human feeling - aside from the excellent 'My husband makes movies' and a mere one or two others.
So, 'Nine' fans - I'd like to be converted. How does the stage version make us care? Did the scenes dissolve into past and fantasy as in the film, or were more of them played as real human confrontations with Guido in the here and now? If the latter then though I can see why Rob Marshall chose to get over film's problem with it being a musical, he's done it at the expense of making something we or the characters could truly engage with. Answer - stop making movie musicals in this way. Strange how the need to excuse/extinguish the moment when people break into song is pushing movie musicals (or Rob Marshall's at least) further into staginess than they may exhibit on stage!
Nine - How Good A Musical Is It?
Rate Topic:
|
|
Promote to Article
