Stephen Pasquale to star in NINE at Kennedy Center- Page 2

[TapDanceGal]

Posted: 7/17/24 at 12:47pm

My friend and I were upgraded from the balcony to the orchestra as well. August is very empty in DC due to Congress being out of session. This originally had other dates and was moved to August 

[BorisTomashevsky]

Posted: 7/23/24 at 5:48pm

Press presentation highlights linked below. Everyone sounds great. Looking like too much choreography for my personal taste for Nine, but will wait for the evening itself and maybe I’ll be turned around. 

Pasquale looks much shorter than I remember him. Is there a chance he wears lifts in his shoes when he’s onstage? Google says 5’11 but he doesn’t look much like 5’11 to me.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9x0vlIRnsh/?igsh=dzhsYXoxZzNzbmpp

Updated On: 7/23/24 at 05:48 PM

[BroadwayNYC2]

Posted: 7/23/24 at 7:13pm

“ It is not selling - it's on TodayTix. Probably the first time a Broadway Center Stage is being sold there.”

Not true at all. I’ve purchased Music Man, Chess, In the Heights, and Sunset Blvd on today tix. 

[joevitus]

Posted: 7/23/24 at 10:50pm

Oh, they sound sooo good. I don't care for the pause and then spoken (rather than sung) "my husband'" at the end of the "My Husband Makes Movies" clip, but otherwise that sampling of the show makes me ache that--I'm guessing--there will be no cast recording and there's no way I could get to D.C. to see it. Just sounds scrumptious. I love this score so much! Can't wait to read what people who get to see it have to say.

[BCfitasafiddle]

Posted: 7/23/24 at 11:49pm

What a dream cast of performers. Carolee's number looks and sounds superb! Shereen is stunning. I've always thought Elizabeth Stanley should play this role. I can't wait to see this! I wish they had done Guido's song so we could hear Pasquale, but I know it'll be worth the wait. 

[NakedMaid]

Posted: 8/4/24 at 4:35pm

I saw the show last night and I'm sad to report it was a total mess. 

Full disclosure, I saw the Mendes revival (and the movie) and most of my reaction is based in knowing the piece via that lens.

It's clear Andy had a vision of infusing this production with an overwhelming and unrelenting amount of nonsensical choreography. In doing so, he neglected the scripted storytelling resulting in a lack of tension, clarity, sexiness and a production completely devoid of any emotion for the stellar cast. It left the show looking chaotic and dizzying.

I've seen FOLLIES and SIDE SHOW in the venue and this production looked rather cheap in comparison. I'n not sure if this is a different series than those were a part of.

The good news, Carolee was the true standout (no surprises there) infusing her number with some true comic moments and fun audience-involved ad libs.

SP and ES are in great voice but poor direction left their character arcs feeling more like straight lines to nowhere. 

I could go on but why reflect on the negatives? The lighting design was pretty cool though!!

I'm very interested in hearing other's reactions. 

[Esther2]

Posted: 8/4/24 at 5:11pm

We're not seeing this until Saturday, but to address your concern of looking cheap, Follies and Side Show were full productions/revivals.  This is part of the Center Stage series which is supposed to be a somewhat stripped down production - kinda like Encores.  

[NOWaWarning]

Posted: 8/4/24 at 6:11pm

NakedMaid said: "Full disclosure, I saw the Mendes revival (and the movie) and most of my reaction is based in knowing the piece via that lens."

What Mendes revival? The Broadway revival was directed by David Leveaux if that's the production you're referring to.

 

[Owen22]

Posted: 8/4/24 at 8:33pm

NakedMaid said: "I saw the show last night and I'm sad to report it was a total mess. Full disclosure, I saw the Mendes revival (and the movie) and most of my reaction is based in knowing the piece via that lens."

The film version, though not bad, is NOT the musical "Nine"...

 

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 8/4/24 at 8:39pm

I'm looking to get tickets, is there one side that would be preferable to the other or anything? 

[Ravenclaw]

Posted: 8/4/24 at 9:05pm

NOWaWarning said: "NakedMaid said: "Full disclosure, I saw the Mendes revival (and the movie) and most of my reaction is based in knowing the piece via that lens."

What Mendes revival? The Broadway revival was directed by DavidLeveaux if that's the production you're referring to."

To be fair, Leveaux first directed it at the Donmar in the 90s under Mendes's tenure as artistic director. It's an easy enough mistake

[rfksansiro]

Posted: 8/5/24 at 9:45am

I saw the production on Saturday night and agree on the choreography.  At times, there was so much going on stage that your eyes did not know where to look.  I preferred the moments where it was just one or two actors on stage and they could connect.  The cast was in fine voice and had their moments to shine, but it was all too cluttered.

[BorisTomashevsky]

Posted: 8/5/24 at 11:58am

I’m afraid I must agree with every word NakedMaid wrote.

I knew we were in for a rough ride the moment the altos came in during the Overture Della’ Donne. The sopranos had been clear and confident. Seconds later, the altos, flat and uncertain, made me realize the fundamental truth of the night: he’d cast dancers, not singers.

And in those three badly sung first notes of “La La LAAAA” the rest of the night was foretold: two and half hours of over-choreography and sloppy music.

You know Sam Byck’s monologues in Assassins? I vaguely remember in one of them he says something like “You f*cked it up, Dick, you went and f*cked it aaaaaall up!” That was me throughout the night, but switch out “Dick” for “Andy”. And co-incidentally we were seeing this show just a few steps from the Watergate Hotel.

This really isn’t Nine that we’re seeing. It’s Andy Blankenbeuhler music video after Andy Blankenbeuhler music video, with cameos by a few characters named Guido, Luisa, Claudia, and Carla. (The actress playing Carla will be replaced if this moves to NYC, which apparently they hope it does, because these days what production that doesn’t deserve to move doesn’t try to move all the same?) He’s added “clarifying lines” throughout the show but mainly in the lead up to the Overture, either because he thinks we’re too dumb, or the cast is too dumb, to get it as written. Or both.

(My thoughts will come out in a bit of a mess, because in talking about such a disconnected product I’ll be challenged to lay it out evenly after the fact. Sorry for this.)

I don’t expect the sloppy ensemble music to get tighter over the course of the run. This wasn’t a case of early-performance jitters that will be easily righted, but rather a fundamental inability to perform the score as required or to pick up vocal entrances with confidence, and Nine has a lot of those.

Where the vocal talent and discernment and finesse exists, it REALLY exists, but in a score where the chorus is so essential and interwoven among the soloists, that talent is the exception and not the rule. Pasquale sings a perfect Guido and I’m convinced he could never sing badly if he tried. A lot of it is done in almost sotto-voce but still with intensity, which makes the leaps to full voice even more astonishing and impressive. He did sometimes get out of time with the orchestra but I could tell that he just couldn’t hear or maybe didn’t have eyes on the monitor.

Carolee’s pitch and placement should be studied in drama schools. Folies Bergeres was a tour de force due to her from start to finish, entirely because of her intuition and innate show-woman-ship in the role of Liliane LaFleur, and in spite of the production she was doing it in. The ad-libs with the audience were inspired and electric in their timing and wit. Bless this woman (who should have had a Patti-level career) and I hope casting and producers make more offers that are worthy of her.

Can someone please ask Elizabeth Stanley to sing the role of Luisa as it is written, and not to make “improvements” with option-ups and back phrasing. It’s already perfect just the way it is.

Can someone please sit all the leading players (aside from Carolee) down and watch some YouTube videos on how Europeans walked/stood in the 1960s, because This Ain’t It. I’m mainly thinking of Luisa and Claudia, who should maintain stillness until they simply can’t anymore, and they then make a movement or a head turn or a folding of the arms only when their character can’t help it. Their dignity should be in their stillness and right now there’s none - just a bunch of surplus upper-body movement. Too many contemporary micro-movements which ultimately mean the important moments of movement are Meaningless. Yes, I know the cliche of Italians speaking with their hands, but at the moment these Italians are speaking with every single fiber.

Pasquale, brilliant though his singing is, needs to switch out all the staccato in his physicality during the book scenes and swap it with legato energy. There’s a wealth of bitsy-piecy hand gestures and shoulder movements but zero smoothness or ease, and those things are how this character gets every girl, not through erratic, short-fuse, rapid physical impulse. If you watched him without sound you might think you’re seeing a neurotic Wall Street intern having a breakdown.

Yes, the Italian film director might be in a crisis too, but the baseline has to be a physical ease in which he has always lived which is compromised by suggestions of physical stress. Right now it looks like he’s always been jerky and never lived as a physically-legato Italian. And we’re meant to believe that all these women would give up everything for that wacky energy. Things start to look right during “Only With You” but of course he’s betrayed by Andy having him do Too Much so even then, our hopes for some ease are dashed.

The scene preceding Unusual Way should be our chance to slow down, take a breath, and observe the subtleties of Guido and Claudia's connection. They're alone on a beach but are delivering their lines like they've got 15 seconds left on the clock at a speed dating event. Let us slow the hell down for a minute. And I know Grand Canal has various options in the book for how much of the score to perform, but couldn’t we have had the whole thing instead of that re-arranged mess?

Lesli sings Be Italian quite brilliantly but completely overdoes Be Italian in terms of action and "busy-ness". Another case of everything-going-on when the MO (IMO) should be only-move-when-essential. And why was older Guido sitting on her lap and singing the number with her? It’s written as it happened in the memory of Young Guido but he was barely involved. Did they want to avoid a creepy factor of older lady teaching a young kid about intimacy?

Young Guido is the one element here where dancing and "joie de vivre" made sense in scenes and songs that don't really need dance. The kid from his memories moving in a way no one else is moving. After all, he is the gesture of a personality faded/lost. Charlie Firlik as Young Guido sang Getting Tall beautifully, and is a case where he'll find more and own it more deeply over the course of the week.

EVERYTHING IS GDDAMN DANCED. Stuff that has no reason to be. And much of is it stamping with forearms raised one by one (a la Walk Like a Man from Jersey Boys) and none of it should be there. It all takes away from the impact that the writers have written into their piece. Yes the dancers are very good, but completely out of place, and would make more sense doing what they’re doing at the Joyce or the Ailey or anywhere else.

So much is danced, that by the time Folies Bergeres rolls around it’s not any kind of novelty. We’ve so far been seeing nothing but movement, and now this number which should fly in the face of every song thus far is kinda just like the rest of them! We’re not delighted to see Lilliane with suggestions of her former life, because it’s what we’ve come to expect so far. “Every character moves moves moves and so it makes sense that she and this number do too!” And in saying that, the choreography for the number isn’t different enough from all the other numbers to be considered a moment of surprise, of “something new!”, like it’s written to be. It’s just another shrug-fest ensemble number like we’ve had all along - but Carolee is still excellent in it.

When the orchestra sounds great, they sound great. But they’re under-rehearsed overall and the MD is really too far away to run a tight ship. The players are split into two groups, one USL and one USR, and the conductor is kinda SL, so I don’t think positioning is helping any of the issues around singers and orchestra being “together”.

The set and lighting design, working together with white muslin drops, a few creative projections, and some stark whites and blues, are quite wonderful. We’re effectively on a sound stage and I don’t think that’s too great a leap from the original concept of being at a spa. It’s still something of Guido’s world and I think with less going on physically we’d be able to appreciate it more as a simple backdrop. There’s just too much happening in front of it all.

There’s a dialogue moment in Grand Canal where Guido tries to calm an angry/betrayed Luisa down by saying “solo un film” (it’s only a movie). I heard the line and thought HUH, that sure is a reminder isn’t it. I’d forgotten that that’s what it’s been about - getting his movie made, getting out of his creative crisis - because in Andy’s world, there’s just been so much other stuff going on.

Similarly, when Luisa sings “be on your own, I set you free”, I realized OH YEAH, we were meant to be paying attention to their relationship. But Andy Wouldn’t Let Us.

Yours,

Robespierre Tomashevsky

Updated On: 8/5/24 at 11:58 AM

[WindyNewYorker]

Posted: 8/5/24 at 12:41pm

Would you please share what the orchestra is made up of, instrumentation? Thank you. Your review makes me want to see the show more.

[BorisTomashevsky]

Posted: 8/5/24 at 12:56pm

WindyNewYorker said: "Would you please share what the orchestra is made up of, instrumentation? Thank you. Your review makes me want to see the show more."

Sure, according to the playbill (and sorry for the double spacing, my phone doesn’t know any better) the orchestra has:

Reeds (5)

Horns (2)

Trumpets (2)

Trombone (2)

Percussion 

Drums 

Violins (3)

Viola (2)

Cello (2)

Bass

Keyboard

 

And to answer an earlier question, there was no Germans at the Spa in this production. Pity. 

 

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 8/5/24 at 1:02pm

Boris, out of curiosity, did you see the original and other first-class productions? You speak in a way that suggests you may never be pleased with anything but the Tune staging & a comparable cast.

Some of what you describe does sound fixable if this were a longer run or received a transfer, but a transfer would be SO idiotic considering the lack of name recognition in this cast (and without the touring potential of something like Spamalot). Some directors, like Chavkin, cannot get a show "right" on their first crack and need a subsequent full production.

Updated On: 8/5/24 at 01:02 PM

[BorisTomashevsky]

Posted: 8/5/24 at 1:24pm

ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "Boris, out of curiosity, did you see the original and other first-class productions? You speak in a way that suggests you may never be pleased with anything but the Tune staging & a comparable cast."

Fair question Ermengarde; I've only seen the original at TOFT (about a decade ago) and bootlegs of the 2003 revival, plus the Manhattan School of Music production (and the highlights concert with Santino, not comparable to anything really).

I'm certainly ready to love other stagings (I mentioned the placement on a soundstage made sense to me) and the MSM production was really pleasing overall and had me weeping during the final moments. I just will always be shrugging when something is too frenetic (when inherently the piece suggests being the opposite) or when something as essential as the way characters of that time and place move hasn't had a vernacular established. 

The ensemble were giving 2024 external sexiness rather than 1960s internal fire and essence. This suggests (to me) thar the person at the helm either didn't have time to find the internal and had to resort to external, or wouldn't be able to find the internal no matter how long he had. The MSM students were so much more successful in conveying time and place.

You could get a fine production of Camelot onstage in a short time - far less moving pieces (both internally and externally). Nine may just be too intricate to do quite-well in a couple of weeks of rehearsal. This was Nine-ish.

[RunnyBabbit]

Posted: 8/5/24 at 2:05pm

I saw the show Sunday night and I completely agree with the other commenters regarding this production. It is over-choreographed and under-rehearsed. There were some lovely moments, but overall it just felt messy.

The choreography felt a lot like the recent Sweeney Todd production on Broadway, which is not surprising given that Sweeney felt a bit like Hamilton choreography taken too far (I thought this might have been a Tommy Kail influence given that he directed both but they had different choreographers, but maybe that wasn’t the case?). Nine felt the same way - Andy taking what he did in Hamilton and amping it up too much. A lot of unnecessary movement that distracted from the performances meant to be front and center.

Carolee’s Folies Bergeres was an absolute delight. I will say I did love Be Italian. That was the one place where the choreo matched the spirit of the number well, and Leslie was a joy to watch. Stephen Pasquale sounded nice, but he just didn’t seem to fit in the role - the complete opposite of how well he fit as Sky Masterson in the Kennedy Center’s Guys and Dolls production. Everyone else seemed to have one or two moments where they nailed the characterization, but they couldn’t sustain it.

I’m sure no one at the Kennedy Center thinks this production could transfer to Broadway. From other comments on the boards it seems like they closed off the balcony, and while I did see a few people up there, it was certainly not sold out as other recent Broadway Center Stage productions have been.

The woman next to me and the woman in front of me both had notebooks out, so it seems like the critics were invited for Sunday’s performance. Will be interesting to see the reviews.

[RunnyBabbit]

Posted: 8/5/24 at 2:17pm

WaPo review: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater/2024/08/05/nine-review-kennedy-center-steven-pasquale/

Much more positive than I think the show deserves.

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 8/5/24 at 3:36pm

Don't shoot me for this suggestion, but...

Is NINE a show that would benefit from the Jamie Lloyd treatment? He might actually improve the piece with use of cameras and elegant simplicity of his stagings. And perhaps could attract the type of star that this show requires (someone on the level of Oscar Isaac, Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Pine, Adam Driver, Leslie Odom Jr, Jonathan Bailey, Hiddleston, etc)

Updated On: 8/5/24 at 03:36 PM

[TweetyPie2]

Posted: 8/5/24 at 9:40pm

The run time is listed as two hours with an intermission. That seems really short. But I guess I don’t have to worry about catching the last Metro train.

[Dreamboy3]

Posted: 8/6/24 at 10:32am

Carolee’s pitch and placement should be studied in drama schools. Folies Bergeres was a tour de force due to her from start to finish, entirely because of her intuition and innate show-woman-ship in the role of Liliane LaFleur, and in spite of the production she was doing it in. The ad-libs with the audience were inspired and electric in their timing and wit. Bless this woman (who should have had a Patti-level career) and I hope casting and producers make more offers that are worthy of her.

 

sorry - this role is always a show stopper. If it’s not a tour de force then the actress has been horribly miscast. I have to disagree about Carolee. Every performance of hers is a shriekfest and it feels like she sings for the anticipated applause. She is no Patti LuPone who, as a performer, is sui generis. 

Updated On: 8/6/24 at 10:32 AM

[SisterGeorge]

Posted: 8/6/24 at 1:31pm

RunnyBabbit said: "WaPo review: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater/2024/08/05/nine-review-kennedy-center-steven-pasquale/

Much more positive than I think the show deserves.

I'm seeing this Thursday, and as it is one of my favorite musicals color me relieved that WaPo's is a dissenting, positive voice compared to what has been written on this board. A handful of other peripheral reviews have been quite positive as well (although at least one praised the production while claiming it's not great musical -- I beg to differ). I'm still worried, though, that someone would even think of Fosse while watching NINE, and the previous poster comparing the staging/choreography to the recent Sweeney Todd made me break out in a sweat. 

 

[SisterGeorge]

Posted: 8/6/24 at 1:36pm

ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "Don't shoot me for this suggestion, but...

Is NINE a show that would benefit from the Jamie Lloyd treatment? He might actually improve the piece with use of cameras and elegant simplicity of his stagings. And perhaps could attract the type of star that this show requires (someone on the level of Oscar Isaac, Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Pine, Adam Driver, Leslie Odom Jr, Jonathan Bailey, Hiddleston, etc)"

Oscar and/or Jake as Guido would be a dream come true. Adam maybe, as long as it's an accent-free production (which they all should be, anyway).

 

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 8/6/24 at 4:06pm

SisterGeorge said: "Adam maybe, as long as it's an accent-free production (which they all should be, anyway)."

What a you mean? His accent in a the Faddadi and a da Gucci was a so good!

(what Frank Loesser would sound like as a BWW poster)