STAGE REVIEW : ‘Nine’ Adds Up to an Adventure in Excess

Anyone who has seen Fellini’s more exciting movies--such as “Satyricon,” with its sexual imagery, or “Roma,” with its rushing urban currents--will understand what director Patrick Garza is getting at in his treatment of “Nine” at At A Loss Enterprises in Fullerton.

The production of this odd musical--based on Fellini’s cinematic self-portrait “8 1/2”--is so crammed with sensuous chance-taking and visual symbols (just like a Fellini flick) that it can be nearly suffocating (just like a Fellini flick).

The busyness settles over everything. The hard-working young dancers nearly fall over themselves as they try to maneuver in the very small space at the Fullerton Ballet & Performing Arts Company. Images, voices and action collide in an often grinding manner, sometimes confusing the issue.

But by the same count, Garza’s handling is rarely less than exciting--it’s inventive, startling and, at times, even hallucinatory. It’s easy to like this kind of audaciousness, and it’s not too much of a leap to imagine the stubbornly iconoclastic Fellini approving of all the figurative excess.

Arthur Kopit’s and Maury Yeston’s Tony Award-winning 1982 play ostensibly is set in an Italian spa where the libidinous and indulgent director Guido (fashioned after Fellini himself) has been exiled to sort out his rapidly swirling mid-life crisis and evaporating career. The real locale, though, is Guido’s mind, where all the women from his pressurized life come to cajole, charm and scold.

If we’re supposed to feel for Guido (Daniel D’Bolero), we never quite do, but this is more the musical’s fault than Garza’s. Everything is arranged around the senses instead of the heart. Just take a look at Carla (Lynda Blais), Guido’s voluptuous she-cat of a mistress: The fullness of her heart is not the first thought that comes to mind. Blais strolls about in a skintight lingerie number (just one of Jennifer T. Muse’s and Garza’s super costumes) purring and pouting with an Italian lilt.

Guido’s wife, Luisa (Gayle McIntyre), doesn’t do much to keep his interest anchored at home. Fashioned of equal parts loving mannequin and passionate mate, the character has a shallowness that McIntyre tries to overcome, and she does manage to give a bit more dimension to the role than might be expected.

The other women who control Guido’s psyche include his mother (Ramona Field), who can’t understand why he didn’t become a priest; Sarraghina (Bonnie Onken), a big-bawdyied whore who showed the young Guido (Ian Palmer) the tricks of the trade; Liliane (Marie Kelly), his intolerant producer; and Claudia (Eleanor Petracca), a former protegee who tires of being Guido’s muse.

The distaff side of his life causes confusion, but it’s the artistic side that wreaks havoc. Guido knows everything is slipping, but just in case he should forget, the critic Stephanie Necrophorous (Tracy Cannon) is always there to remind him. His films are, she croons, “visually stunning but emotionally inane. . . . Thanks to him, we have boredom at the movies.”

His movies may be vapid, but Guido, as embodied by D’Bolero, is not. The actor overdoes the brooding, but he holds center stage. The role requires equal amounts of self-loathing and self-infatuation, and D’Bolero communicates enough of both to satisfy. His voice is the ensemble’s strongest, and it shows real emotion on “Bells of St. Sebastian.”

“Nine” is only the second effort for the fledgling At A Loss Enterprises (they launched themselves with “Side by Side by Sondheim”), and it seems that taking risks, even if they don’t always pan out, is part of their repertoire. Good for them.

‘NINE’

An At A Loss Enterprises, in association with the Fullerton Ballet & Performing Arts Company, production of the Arthur Kopit/Maury Yeston musical. Directed by Patrick Garza. With Daniel D’Bolero, Ian Palmer, Gayle McIntyre, Lynda Blais, Eleanor Petracca, Ramona Field, Marie Kelly, Tracy Cannon, Gillian Mac Kirdy, Lisa Bosman, Jill Glassey, Andrea Fitch, Stephanie Peffley, Shelley Davis, Tammy Hulse, Liz Hess, Dorothy Gibbon, Jordan Swerdloff, Tyler Condon and Gina Moscozo. Choreography and set by Garza. Costumes by Jennifer T. Muse and Garza. Lighting by Adrian M. Dickey. Plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. through Sunday at 116 1/2 W. Wilshire Ave., Fullerton. Tickets: $10 to $17.50. (714) 992-2553.