I posted the following on Facebook a few weeks ago, in reference to the international tour of the iconic Italian musical Rugantino, which seems to have ended its run with a brief engagement at City Center early in June. In looking it over, I realized it might well stand in for a review—really an appraisal of the musical itself, more than just the production—and for reasons that will become readily apparent, it seemed appropriate to offer on Aisle Say as well, with a few minor tweaks for the venue.
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Spoiler about a foreign-language musical here; but the
musical is a 50+ year old classic, and the reveal of the ending, from some
perspectives, has all the shock of “Rosebud is a sled,” so I'm not really
exposing a state secret. But with that said…
After seeing
the tour of the imported Italian revival of Rugantino at City Center, in a variant of its
original production (directed/remounted by its engaging star, renowned Italian
comedian Enrico Brignano), I've become quietly, increasingly drawn into learning it. I
downloaded two separate televised versions from YouTube—and just received
an eBay purchase: the original Italian-Broadway cast album (mint condition,
unopened stereo vinyl LP, replete with hard-stock, textured 32 page souvenir
book; all for only $7, hapless vendor didn't know what he was selling off) and
it may get a lot of play for a while.
The
tour’s New York stop s purportedly to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its
Broadway debut. Current PR spin has it that in 1964 it played a “strictly
limited engagement” of three weeks, but history tells a very different tale.
Alexander H. Cohen brought the show over with its original company, hoping for
an open-ended run. The expense was considerable, and not just for obvious
reasons. He commissioned an English translation of the book from Alfred Drake,
English adaptations of the lyrics by Edward Eager, to be read, not performed;
and a then-revolutionary projection system for the subtitles, whose display was
integrated into the set design at various levels appropriate to each scene,
rather than merely above the stage in the manner of supertitles (a word that
didn’t yet exist). The show failed to generate an audience, but one wonders if
its European musical-theatre particulars, as well as its ending, were at the
root. (At City Center, there was nothing fancy about the fairly clumsy
translation [which was simply a supertitle projection], but it didn’t seem to
matter—especially not to the many Italians filling the house.)
Here’s
the boilerplate synopsis:
”Set in 19th century Rome, Rugantino
tells the story of a fun-loving rogue who has plenty of ruganza, or arrogance.
When he makes a bet that he can seduce the wife of one of Rome's most prominent
citizens, he gets more than he bargained for. The musical is created by Garinei
and Giovannini and
written in collaboration with Pasquale
Festa Campanile, Massimo Franciosa and Luigi Magni with music by Armando Trovajoli.”
Structurally,
Act One is a sprawling mess, at least by principles of story construction we
American musical theatre folks hold dear; but then again at the time of its
creation, the typical Italian musical theatre evening lasted four hours, so
what we see as sprawl may well speak to ritualistic or traditional European
expectations for which we have no intrinsic, cultural tolerance (when Alexander
Cohen imported the original production, intensely negotiated cuts were made; I
think those cuts were not in evidence in this 2014 tour).
Act Two is
much tighter; and throughout there are extended nonmusical scenes that, hard as
it may be to believe, rival anything Peter Stone did in 1776 for wit,
sophistication, character delineation and storytelling. And Rugantino has a beautiful equally witty, equally
sophisticated symphonic score. (The only Euro-or-Eastern-musical score I know
to rival it—note I mean only of the ones I know, but those include all the Les
Spectacables, the
Webberrice Krispies and some odd-duck entries from Russia, Korea, Japan and etc.—is
the one written for the Belgian Tintin musical early in this millennium.)
Messy and
neat, it's Italy's most popular home-grown musical (maybe their most popular
musical, period), and the lead roles are star magnets that have audiences
flocking to new revivals to see new faces go through familiar paces. The title
role of Rugantino, in particular, is like Tevye, or Sweeney Todd, or Mama Rose
in terms of how iconic it is to the Italians; it usually goes to a renowned
comedian (who can sing). He's a mischievous, playful layabout and rogue. An
arrogant braggart but mostly a harmless one. But also not quite the man he
wishes to be.
And here's
the thing. Rugantino
is unequivocally a musical comedy. And regarded as such. And it plays like one.
And yet (spoiler coming) in it, just as true love ennobles Rugantino (of
course), he finds himself charged with the murder of an enemy, a murder he
didn't commit; he doesn't refute the charges because the victim was a really
bad guy, and he prefers the street cred of heroism to the rep of cowardice,
especially in the eyes of his inamorata.
And the
musical ends somberly, with his beheading at the guillotine, at the hands of
his sorrowful best friend, a local tavern keeper and freelance headsman, who
has the last line in the play before the blade falls: "Oh Rugantino. It
will be quick."
I
kid you not. I can't decide if that's courageous or crazy. Or just, you know,
that kind of European/Eastern Bloc sensibility that can somehow see the humor
and cathartic satisfaction in a darkly ironic ending.
But it's
certainly a thing.
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