NINE vs. DREAMGIRLS

Was the original production of NINE so superior to the original production of DREAMGIRLS that it deserved to be the best musical of 1982?

Having seen the Leveaux-staging of NINE and Condon's DREAMGIRLS adaptation, it prompts me to ask this question. I enjoyed the Dreamgirls film more than I did Nine....the cast was great, but the show?

...the situation strikes me as a 2 Gents/Follies kind of thing. Enlighten me.

Updated On: 1/7/07 at 11:21 AM

Couple of factors worked in Nine's favor.

1. Nine opened just at the Tony cut-off, while Dreamgirls had opened in late December and had been running for a few months already.

2. The original production of Dreamgirls did not get the reviews one would have expected. Frank Rich wrote a rave in the Times, but a lot of the other reviews were mixed or negative. Many critics assailed it as style over substance, although they in turn reversed their opinions when the scaled back bus and truck production came to Broadway in '87 and saw the depth of what the authors had created.

3. When it came time for the Tonys, I believe that the combination of the powerful Shubert Organization backing of Dreamgirls, and Rich's constant writing about it might have worked against the show, and a vote for Nine was an anti-Dreamgirls vote.

Nine was a lovely show, with an indelible physical production and a great cast. But had I been voting, I would have voted for Dreamgirls. One has to imagine that audiences liked Dreamgirls better as well - even without the Best Musical Tony, Dreamgirls ran twice as long as Nine.

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Updated On: 1/7/07 at 11:32 AM

I've never been able to figure that one out either, but having seen both productions I can speak to one thing: Tommy Tune's production of NINE was far superior to the Leveaux revival. It was gorgeous to look at, it seemed intelligent and very "euro-chic," the performances were all top-notch and it was, like DREAMGIRLS, original and thought provoking. Tune's production went a long way in covering up the flaws of the piece, flaws that Leveaux exposed with a gigantic butcher knife.

DREAMGIRLS was astounding in it's cinematic fluidity and raw emotion, and it was certainly the bigger hit.

Personally, I preferred NINE, but in retrospect (and after seeing that dreadful revival) I'm surprised DREAMGIRLS didn't win.

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God if they were to revive NINE with the original costumes, it would look like a "NIGHT OF A THOUSAND STARS" from 1983. The costumes were VERY, VERY 80s...

They both looked like episodes of DYNASTY. I don't think the costumes of the Original Productions of DREAMGIRLS or NINE are something we want to recreate anytime soon.

This costume, worn (barely) by Anita Morris, was and still is absolutely stunning...

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Updated On: 1/7/07 at 12:21 PM

Well, I wouldn't judge The Wizard of Oz's costumes overall by Dorothy's gingham farm-girl dress...



EDIT: And I wouldn't judge the Dreamgirls' costumes from Effie's brown stretch pants and maternity top for "And I'm Telling You" either.

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Updated On: 1/7/07 at 12:29 PM

Dorothy didn't wear leotard wrap skirts. How dare you drag her into this.

Or Zeke's overalls... or Auntie Em's blouse...

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he was probably forced to sit through that movie where Demi Moore shaves her head one too many times.

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Unsurprisingly, I preferred DREAMGIRLS at the time and still do.

While I certainly enjoyed Tune's clever staging, the costumes and much of the score, I also found the show to be rather cold and antiseptic and emotionally uninvolving. It's funny how DREAMGIRLS was seen to be all style over substance at the time, because that's exactly how I felt about NINE -- I admired the technique and the flash, but could never connect to the story. And while DREAMGIRLS certainly uses too much shorthand to resolve itself in ACT II, I always found NINE's Act II to be flaccid and meandering (and in the case of that interminable Grand Canal sequence, downright boring and annoying). I also founding the ending resolution of Guido's with his nine year old self to be more self-indulgent (and a little phony -- I just never quite bought it) than satisfying (and I thought that the whole business with Saraghina was a little silly).

For me, NINE was, thanks to Tune, was a visually stunning spectacle that struck me (despite the wonderful Raul Julia, Anita Morris et al) as somewhat empty at its core, while DREAMGIRLS, which was also visually dazzling, flawlessly staged and technically innovative, packed the sort of emotional wallop (thanks in part to Holliday, Derricks, Devine et al) that I have rarely ever had at the theatre. Both are great shows, but for me, DREAMGIRLS was superior.

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Updated On: 1/7/07 at 12:54 PM

Well, by the time I saw DREAMGIRLS and NINE, I had probably seen nearly 100 professional productions on Broadway and regionally (including the OBC casts of ACL, SWEENEY, PIPPIN, THE WIZ, EVITA, WHOREHOUSE, DANCIN, AIN'T MISBEHAVIN, BARNUM WOMAN OF THE YEAR, 42nd STREET, SOPHISTICATED LADIES, THEY'RE PLAYING OUR SONG et al as well as several productions of Shakespeare, Ibsen, O'Neill, Miller, Chekhov, Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Greek classics etc....) so it's not as if I was some young neophyte with stars in his eyes who didn't know what he was seeing and hadn't yet developed a discerning eye (I would put my critical skills in 1982 up against most of the older adults I knew at the time -- certainly my theatre teachers hadn't seen or read nearly as much as I had).

Furthermore, I've since seen both NINE and DREAMGIRLS in multiple productions over the years and have exactly the same opinion of the shows now as I did 25 years ago.

There's no reason to attempt to discount my opinion then due to my age. There were PLENTY of people (including theatre professionals with years of experience) in their 30s, 40, 50s, 60s and beyond who had precisely the same opinion I did of those shows then and that I have now. I thought that DREAMGIRLS was a better show and I was FAR from alone in that opinion.

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A couple of other ADULT opinions of NINE --

Frank Rich (who found DREAMGIRLS to be a landmark, an instant classic in the annals of Broadway history and one of the greatest shows he'd ever seen):

"There's so much rich icing on 'Nine' that anyone who cares about the progress of the Broadway musical will have to see it. There is also a hollowness at the show's core that requires real patience. At the gut, emotional level, 'Nine' never makes us understand or care about Guido or most of the women who gnaw at his soul. As drama, the show's structure seems static: Act I is overlong exposition that leads to sudden resolution in Act II - climaxed by an abrupt, unmotivated happy ending that is even more dishonest than Mr. Fellini's. There are also severe lapses of taste: for all the brilliantly styled moments in 'Nine,' there are others where stylization curdles into the vulgarity of kitsch and camp...............


Arthur Kopit's sometimes stylish book doesn't find the lines that might help bring the man at center stage into focus. And Mr. Julia's sometimes charming star performance - persuasively Italian but vocally weak -lacks the galvanizing charisma that might draw us to Guido in spite of the text's holes. As a result, the big set piece of Act II - in which Guido's personal and creative crises resolve themselves in a surreal movie-opera-dream sequence about Casanova - is less a cathartic climax than an empty, if sumptuous, exercise in style. It breaks through the show's overly diagrammatic black-andwhite color scheme but not through the hero's skin.

Yet it is still fun to watch, and Mr. Tune has more visions up his long sleeve, too. My favorite occurs before the start of Act II when the young Guido (Cameron Johann) walks through the audience, climbs up on the cakewalk surrounding the glowing orchestra pit and waits expectantly with the rest of us for the curtain to rise. What the image sums up is Mr. Tune's pure, childlike rapture for the theater, and while that's the only real emotion in 'Nine,' it's so potent that it just may carry those who share it through the rest."

http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?_r=1&res=9A0CEEDA1438F933A25756C0A964948260&oref=slogin


John Simon (who was similarly mixed on DREAMGIRLS, which he found "a nonstop geyser of visual originality," but didn't like the book and score):

"NINE, the musical into which Frederico Fellini's 8 1/2 has shrunk, is a curiously titillating, enervating, engaging, and frustrating piece of work. It displays much talent, some genuine achievement, equal amounts of intelligence and foolishness, a lot of vulgarity, and more than a little grace. You want it to be much better than it is because you can sense the wherewithal for distinction; you wince at opportunities let slip and false steps taken, but you never quite give up on it. In the end, you are left in a state of mixed excitation, unfulfilled expectancy, and mild revulsion, wondering whether you are sorry you came or sad at having to go........ The core of NINE may be hollow or even rancid, but the surface is dazzlingly dressed to the nines."

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