NINE vs. DREAMGIRLS

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 11:21am

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

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 11:31am

NINE is overall a much better piece of writing than DREAMGIRLS. Both shows had dazzling original stagings and extraordinary performances by the central leads.

If anything the movie of DREAMGIRLS (which I loved) really points up the flaws of the stage musical. The first act is stellar - the second act descends into campy soap opera. And lets face it - the ending to DREAMGIRLS feels totally pat and tacked on - almost like they didn't know how to end it.

NINE has one of the most emotionally statisfying conclusions of any Broadway musicals.

Ultimately, comparing the two shows is like comparing apples to oranges - but I believe that the Tony voters got it right. I believe NINE is a much more fully realized piece of writing than DREAMGIRLS will ever be.

[Smaxie]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 11:32am

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.

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

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 11:37am

Smaxie - happily, the Tonys aren't about awarding the "audience favorite" - I mean, by that token, MAMMA MIA!, GREASE, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, etc. "should" have won the Tony. They all had runs longer than the Best Musical winner of their respective seasons.

But you are chiefly right in your analysis - though I think the simple truth is that NINE won, because as a musical, it got better reviews than DREAMGIRLS.
Updated On: 1/7/07 at 11:37 AM

[D2]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 11:39am

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.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 11:45am

You're thinking in extremes, and it wasn't an extreme choice of one over the other. It had to have been VERY close, I have no doubt. I wish we had more "close calls" like that, with terrific, solid competitors. More often we get one stand-out and a few duds, and a boring competition, year after year. (The last one that felt this close to me was Ragtime vs. Lion King.)

I saw both productions within a week of each other, and I would have voted for NINE as well. It was (for me) even more breathtaking visually and jaw-dropping theatrically on stage than Dreamgirls, for one main reason... Tommy Tune. I wish that someday they would revive the show with all the original staging, costumes, sets, etc., although it would be VERY expensive to do so.

I also felt that NINE had a stronger arc dramatically. As I have said on other threads, the plot to Dreamgirls loses a great amount of steam in Act II and kind of dies out dramatically near the end. Condon did a lot to "fix" that in the film, although it STILL loses steam... just not as much as it did on Broadway.

NINE has a stronger score, IMO, overall. It's epic, haunting, exotic and classic. Dreamgirls has recently been slammed by movie critics for having a weak score, outside of 2 or 3 songs, and many of these same comments were made when the Broadway show opened as well. I think the score is great, and serves the show extremely well.

The original production of NINE felt like "high art" not "pop art," and the Tony voters made their choice accordingly.

Again, I'm REALLY nitpicking here. Both shows were fantastic, but if you were voting on Best Musical, Best Director, Score, etc., for me... the choice was practically a toss of the coin... but I would have picked NINE as well for each of these, just as they did.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 11:48am

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...

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 11:53am

Very "Euro '80s" and I LOVED them.

Hardly the Mackie-esque Night of 1000 Stars though.


It think it's funny how most people (Americans anyhow) think in terms of extremes. There's one WINNER and the rest are obviously sh*t. If they voted for NINE, they must have hated Dreamgirls. No so!


EDIT: Actually, MB, the original Dreamgirls looked WAY more like Night of 1000 Stars, and it was supposed to be the '60s and '70s.

Updated On: 1/7/07 at 11:53 AM

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:11pm

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.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:13pm

I'd like to see these again, personally...



This sequence from NINE rivals the original Follies. It was jaw-dropping live.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:21pm

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

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

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:26pm

Those costumes were great. But now you need to find some pictures of those big shoulder pads and puffy balloon skirts.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:29pm

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.

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

[Caroline-Q-or-TBoo]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:29pm

oh to have seen the original Nine...

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:30pm

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

[Caroline-Q-or-TBoo]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:32pm

on the site-that-must-not-be-named they have a tony clip from Nine. All those puffy dresses and excessive frilly-ness is there, and, may I say, it looks mahvelous!

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:33pm

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

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:34pm

Caroline-Q-or-TBoo --- It WAS mahvelous.

Obviously, MB had a bad time in the '80s.

[Caroline-Q-or-TBoo]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:36pm

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

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:42pm

I loved the 80s! I love the original costumes from NINE. But if I want to see them again, all I have to do is rent THE WEDDING SINGER. I certainly wouldn't want to see a Broadway musical set in the 60s revived today with those frocks. Not unless Joan Collins and Linda Gray are starring!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:54pm

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.

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

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 12:59pm

"I admired the technique and the flash, but could never connect to the story."


Margo--You were a kid (or at the most a "young adult") at the time you saw both of these original productions, right?

Honestly, that's why I think Dreamgirls has had such an impact on you. It was GREAT, don't get me wrong, but I've seen plenty since that show and since Holliday that have been equally as impressive.

A lot of our perspective has to do with age. Hell, I LOVE the Bacharach disaster of "Lost Horizon" on film, but I was TEN when I saw it.

...And MB, you didn't see either of these original productions live, right?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 1:20pm

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.

[jv92]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 1:33pm

Nine's score is breathtakning. Absolutley one of the greatest written for the Broadway stage. Dreamgirls' score is great, but lyrically, it's sometimes almost stupid. Nine's lyrics are witty, emotional and nearly perfect. Musically, Nine also is a bit more inventive, although Dreamgirls' music is quite incredible as well. Dreamgirls has much more a story, Nine is extremely conceptual. There's no real plot. There's no way to compare their books. The dialouge in both are good. The storytelling in both are great.
Tommy Tune staged a show that for some felt like a showpiece for very talented ladies with no real plot. I completely disagree with that. I think his staging was inventive. Of course, Grand Hotel would surpass it, but Nine's staging was remarkable. He uused actors as setpiece. Anita Morris getting into difficult possistions on that cube, that was the brilliance of his staging. The actors were the set.
Michael Bennet did do an incredible job with Dreamgirls as well. However, his staging was less about actors and more about the set and lighting. There was a great deal of dance in Dreamgirls, but it seemed to me that more attention was paid to the dancing light towers and set pieces than the dancing chorus. For me, the dancing actors were fare more effective than the dancing light towers, no matter how technically marvelous they were.
They were both great. However, for me Nine's score is what makes it better than Dreamgirls.
The Tony Awards in 1982 were highly political that year. I believe The Wing was punishing The Shuberts for allowing the theatres that would become the Marriott Marquis to be torn down by giving Nine (The Nederlander's big show) the Tony.

SPOILER BELOW!
Just a question about Dreamgirls (I'm sure Margo could clear this up), in the stage version of Dreamgirls, did Jimmy actually O.D. and die, or was that added to develop the story for the film. I can't remember and the synopsis I've read in the booklet of the cast album hasn't helped.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 1/7/07 at 1:53pm

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."