Mikhael Farah Gaeta channels panic, confusion and sexual appetite as Guido Contini.
In an interview with Speakeasy Stage, Nine composer Maury Yeston stated that his show began as a retelling of movie director Federico Fellini’s semi-autobiographical film 8½. It eventually became “an essay on the power of women … our mothers, our sisters, our teachers, our temptresses, our judges, our nurses, our wives, our mistresses, our muses.”
The musical Nine, produced by Music Theater of Madison, running through August 1, gives audiences a front-row seat to this parade of female tropes, as the main character, the famous Italian director Guido Contini (played convincingly by Mikhael Farah Gaeta) turns 40 and celebrates by having a complete nervous breakdown.
He’s supposed to start shooting his next movie in a week, but is suffering from terrible writer’s block. His producer (the charming and comic Sarah Blakeslee) hounds him, reminding Contini that his next epic had better be good, since his three previous films have been terrible flops. He is surrounded, distracted, and tormented by the dizzying array of women in his life. Once his muses, his supporters, and his lovers, now they are part of the cacophony that prevents him from accessing his creative genius. His mistress (the aggressively sexy Leslie Cao) wants to marry him; his wife (the long-suffering Liz Griffith) wants a divorce; his starlet (the innocent and vacant Bridget Schwefel) wants to play a new, better role in his next film; and his mother (the operatically trained Alexandra Zulauf) scolds him for making movies she can’t understand. When inspiration finally comes, and Guido decides to make an autobiographical movie casting himself as the legendary lover Casanova, things really fall apart. An eleventh-hour moment of clarity suggests that our hero may have found the path to redemption, but it is doubtful that this lifetime womanizer can truly mend his ways.
In the lead role, Gaeta communicates his character’s panic, confusion, and sexual appetite well, exhibiting a nice vocal range in his musical numbers. Literally caught in the middle of the action, he spends most of the play center stage, surrounded by the large female ensemble. Griffin gives a standout performance as Contini’s disappointed wife, bringing strength and real passion to her songs, “My Husband Makes Movies,” and “Be on Your Own.” As the needy mistress Carla, Cao performs an incredibly seductive pole dance in her lingerie while singing “A Call From the Vatican” and exhibits a softer side in her lovely song of farewell, “Simple,” in the second act. Sami Elmer also captivates as an Italian prostitute, Saraghina, who teaches a young Guido (an innocent Julian Engle) about the art of seduction with a suggestive tambourine dance in “Ti Voglio Bene/Be Italian.”
The ensemble was uniformly strong and harmonized well. In their spoken lines, accents (Italian, German) were often inconsistent, and many of the cast kept their Midwestern speech intact. The exception to this was Sarah Blakeslee’s thick French accent.
Nine is presented in the round on the Brink’s Nightclub Stage, which is often used for wedding receptions. The space has several interesting features built in, such as a gorgeous two-story staircase, several levels and opportunities to enter and exit the square stage from any direction. Director Meghan Randolph makes great use of the unusual venue and keeps the action moving by using the entire space. A room built for music performance, the sound quality is also good —the cast of 17 women, and two men fill the room easily with big chorus numbers, supported nicely by a three-piece ensemble of two keyboards and percussion, led by music director Erin McConnell. Because the ceiling is low, however, lighting the actors is challenging — lights spill over into the audience, shining directly into the eyes of the viewers, which is distracting. Choreography, by Lyn Pilch and Randolph, is entertaining but uncomplicated, since it needs to play to audiences on all sides.
Overall, MTM presents a solid production of fallen creative genius, overwhelmed by the women in his life, giving many area performers a chance to shine.
