The glittering revival of Nine, directed by David Leveaux, opened at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on April 10 with
a bona fide movie star at its center. Antonio Banderas plays blocked filmmaker Guido Contini, who is
surrounded--literally--by women who seduce, scold and distract him. Were critics beguiled by Banderas and his
bevy of beauties?
Here is a sampling of what they had to say:
Ken Mandelbaum in his Broadway.com Review: "The original Nine exulted in its sheer
theatricality and visual splendor. Leveaux, responsible for such superb Broadway revivals
as Anna Christie, The Real Thing, and Electra, and announced for next season's Fiddler on
the Roof, offers a drabber, less festive Nine. Tune's version was ultimately more about style
than substance, and that style camouflaged the work's shortcomings. Leveaux appears to
be looking for a profundity that Nine doesn't possess, probing the text for non-existent
psychological depths. The result is a production that removes most of the merriment
without making us care more deeply about Guido's plight."
Ben Brantley of The New York Times:"Its raining women in the glamour-saturated new
production of Nine, Maury Yeston's 1982 musical portrait of the mind of a movie director.
From the moment the first shapely pair of legs are seen insinuating their way down a
heaven-scraping spiral staircase in David Leveaux's hyperelegant revival, Nine is flooded
to the drowning point in glossy, exotic images of femininity. Whether fat, skinny, short, tall,
young or old, each of the cast's 16 actresses is a knockout of sorts, styled to the teeth. And
floating in this ocean of estrogen, looking like an especially sweet pussycat who has fallen
into the cream, is Antonio Banderas, the Spanish-born movie star, making his Broadway
debut."
Clive Barnes of The New York Post: "The 1982 musical Nine was
from the beginning a brilliantly flawed success. Then came Antonio
Banderas and David Leveaux. Nine is still flawed, but in the
Roundabout Theater Company version that opened last night, the
flaws are notably less noticeable... Mary Stuart Masterson as Guido's long-
suffering wife, Jane Krakowski as his short-fused floozy (her circus descent on a
swing is sensational) and Laura Benanti as his reluctant muse are all pluperfect.
Nine still hasn't the emotional and artistic resonance of Fellini's 81/2, but it's a rich
and thrilling night of theater and, in this persuasive staging, simply great
entertainment."
Howard Kissel of The New York Daily News: "Banderas avoids the clichés of
Broadway leading men. His sensuality is effortless, and he can heighten it by being
vulnerable. Neither does he strut or swagger vocally. His singing is smooth, soft
and sexy. When he sings "Unusual Way," a duet with Laura Benanti, who plays
another mistress, Claudia, they both caress the gorgeous song. It is absolutely
melting. Banderas' accent does get in the way of the patter lyrics, and there is not
enough contrast between the arrogant public figure and the troubled private Guido.
Nevertheless, he makes the difficult role entirely believable and moving. As his wife,
Mary Stuart Masterson has a deeply appealing combination of aloofness and
resignation. She sings "Be on Your Own" touchingly. Krakowski is expectedly hot as
Carla. Rivera is delicious as LaFleur, giving no indication she was on Broadway
before most of her fellow cast members were born."
Charles Isherwood of Variety: "The lissome ghosts of conquests past haunt the anxious mind of movie
director Guido Contini throughout the musical Nine, but there's another specter hanging around the new
Broadway revival from director David Leveaux. It's the lanky shade of Tommy Tune: Recollections of his
celebrated staging of the 1982 original are never quite dispelled by Leveaux's respectable but thrill-free
production. Audiences not exposed to Tune's magical work two decades
back may still be bewitched by the heady pleasures of Maury Yeston's
distinguished score, which is superbly performed by a handful of
accomplished actresses. And Antonio Banderas, the sexy Spanish movie
star making a bold Broadway debut as the chronically straying Italian
moviemaker, enacts the central role with a fervent energy and emotional
vibrancy that is always engaging--even if his English is not always
comprehensible. But Leveaux's scattered production simmers when it
should sizzle--it plays like a movie that needs another round of sharpening
in the editing room. The dazzling highlights of the original, most damagingly,
seem to have been left on the cutting-room floor."
Michael Kuchwara of the Associated Press: "Those opening moments are
only a tantalizing taste of what is to come in Leveaux's
inventive production, which stars Antonio Banderas as Guido,
a man undergoing an emotional meltdown as his life and his career collapse. Much of the
show takes place in Guido's imagination, freeing the story from a conventional narrative
structure and allowing the director the freedom to take the story anywhere he wants. And
Leveaux's Nine is a model of what a good revival should be--a celebration of what was on
stage in the past but reimagined for the present."
Elysa Gardner of USA Today: "Somehow, this Nine adds up to less than the sum of its
impressive parts. Prominent among those parts is leading man Antonio Banderas, who plays
film director Guido Contini with a winning mix of gentle vulnerability and feline charisma…But
it's sometimes difficult to believe that Banderas' Guido, for all his charm, was ever a masterful
manipulator of art or women. He seems too instinctively overwhelmed by his wife, Luisa, who
is portrayed as a paragon of sensibleness by Mary Stuart Masterson, and his mistress, Carla,
played by a spangled, slithering Jane Krakowski, who at one point appears hanging upside
down from a bedsheet. That's to say nothing of Guido's longtime producer and mentor, Liliane
La Fleur, played by a gloriously well-preserved Chita Rivera. Rivera's still-sparkling presence
is rivaled by only one other woman in the cast, Laura Benanti, who may have the most beautiful singing voice on
Broadway today. As Guido's artistic muse, Claudia, Benanti also reveals a poised intelligence rare among young
actors."
Linda Winer of Newsday: "If you are going to have a musical about a man in a vortex of adoring women--
including the ghost of his handsome mother--the man had better have
charm. And, no surprise, Antonio Banderas is absolutely crazy with charm.
What was not as self-evident before Spain's gift to Hollywood made his
Broadway debut last night in a revival of Nine, however,is that the man
also is a magnetic stage creature, a savvy combination of humility and
pizzazz. He can sing, maneuvering the highs and lows of Maury Yeston's
melodies with accuracy and occasional abandon. And he can vamp a
tango with the best… What Banderas cannot do--at least not enough to
make the revival at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre into the smash Broadway
needs right now--is galvanize David Leveaux's oddly unfocused vision
into anywhere near the show that won Tommy Tune's uneven
extravaganza five Tony Awards."
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Taken from Broadway.com
For a synopsis, behind the scenes fotos and more of NINE, visit PSClassics.com
