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“La Bella Confusione” was the original title Federico Fellini wanted to give his film that eventually became “8 1/2,” which then became the unacknowledged basis for the 1982 Tony-winning Broadway musical “Nine” that has music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and book by Arthur Kopit (with assist from Mario Fratti’s Italian play “Six Passionate Women”).

The phrase translates into “the beautiful confusion,” and that’s about the most charitable assessment you can say of the Manila production, directed by Bobby Garcia for his Atlantis Productions, which just ended its three-weekend run at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium of RCBC Plaza in Makati City.

The beauty came chiefly from two elements: the massive Roman-bath set by David Gallo that visually expanded the stage to soaring dimensions; and the constellation of female stars that populated this scenery—some of the finest specimens of Filipino pulchritude and talent on stage and pop entertainment today, in fact: Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo, Carla Guevara-Lafortesa, Cherie Gil, Eula Valdes, Ima Castro, Jay Valencia-Glorioso, even ingenues such as Sitti Navarro and Yanah Laurel.

Whenever these ladies occupied their respective perches up and down the multilevel set, a stunning vision materialized—that of a grand grotto on which the lone male character, the film director Guido Contini (Jett Pangan), seemed to have arranged the many women in his life, goddesses to be displayed, worshipped, fetishized and also, whenever needed, kept at a safe, sterile remove.

Debonair and dissolute

The confusion, on the other hand—well, where to begin? “Nine” isn’t the most cohesive musical to start with, its individually distinct songs for each character or set piece adding up to a sprawling, revue-like (if also stylish and adventurous) whole. That already fuzzy center, however, just about disappeared here with fatal miscasting.

Pangan as Guido, the tormented, midlife-flustered filmmaker that Marcello Mastroianni originated in “8 1/2,” faced a rather insurmountable problem. For the part, “You need a man who is handsome and never seems to have given it a thought,” declared Roger Ebert (quite apt that the best appraisal of the part of a film director came from a film critic).

Both Raul Julia and Antonio Banderas, the 1982 original and the 2003 revival Guidos on Broadway, embodied Latin fire and sensuality, which made them persuasive choices to inhabit the role of a world-famous Italian auteur immobilized, at 40, by a high-pressure life of fame, booze, art, women, money and all that Catholic guilt.

Guido, in other words, called for debonair and dissolute in equal measure; Pangan could do neither. Offstage, this man appears to be the steadiest, squarest rock star there is (Pangan and his rock band The Dawn are going as strong as ever three years shy into their third decade). That unflappable persona, alas, bled into and subverted his Guido at every turn.

Lovely menagerie

Pangan (exceptional a mere four months ago in “Rock of Ages,” also by Atlantis) did sing the score faultlessly. Yet whether he was doing an ironic musical soliloquy (“Guido’s Song”) or tearing himself apart over sin and sexuality (“The Bells of St. Sebastian”), he barely managed to skim even the shallow edges of his character’s ennui and despair.

He could’ve compensated with his Don Juan side; Guido is Italian, after all. (“If you want to make a woman happy,” so he learned as a boy, “you rely on what you were born with. Because it is in your blood.”) But there was none of the charming, erotic, flirty nature that would, at the very least, explain why this man was able to attract this menagerie of lovely, formidable women squawking all over him. Sans passion—libido—on Guido’s end, “Nine” made no sense.

The musical is essentially an egomaniac artist’s extended nervous breakdown, the song-and-dance explosions serving as overlapping interludes of reality, memory and fantasy in his head. One could imagine, say, Nonie Buencamino (Fredrik in Garcia’s 2010 staging of “A Little Night Music”) lending this role more manic, actorly weight.

Without it—with Pangan’s exertions unable to evoke a genuine sense of creative rut and inner aridity—the musical’s resolution, where Guido is saved from self-destruction by his nine-year-old self, felt unearned, the emotional journey that would have justified all that angsty jazz ending just this side of spurious.

Insubstantial singing

Still, if it’s any consolation to Pangan, he wasn’t the only one shoehorned into an ill-fitting role. Valdes, luminous as Guido’s movie-star muse Claudia Nardi, simply couldn’t sing her part—and what heartbreak that her character had the musical’s most ravishing song (“Unusual Way”).

From Valdes’ first two solo notes early in the first act, when she called out Guido’s name in what sounded like a hurriedly primed semi-classical voice, one instinctively felt Valdes was in for a struggle.

Not that she couldn’t sing. The long-running “Zsazsa Zaturnnah Ze Muzikal” was proof enough that she possesses adequate pipes for the demands of musical theater. But there she tackled lite soul and pop; this one called for something quite beyond Valdes’ range.

In the Broadway revival, Laura Benanti’s glistening soprano went a long way toward giving “Unusual Way” its due. Here, not only was Valdes’ voice tense and thin; she went distressingly flat, while holding the note besides, at the end of the long ascending line, “You’re the reason WHY…”

“La Bella Confusione” was the original title Federico Fellini wanted to give his film that eventually became “8 1/2,” which then became the unacknowledged basis for the 1982 Tony-winning Broadway musical “Nine” that has music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and book by Arthur Kopit (with assist from Mario Fratti’s Italian play “Six Passionate Women”).

The phrase translates into “the beautiful confusion,” and that’s about the most charitable assessment you can say of the Manila production, directed by Bobby Garcia for his Atlantis Productions, which just ended its three-weekend run at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium of RCBC Plaza in Makati City.

The beauty came chiefly from two elements: the massive Roman-bath set by David Gallo that visually expanded the stage to soaring dimensions; and the constellation of female stars that populated this scenery—some of the finest specimens of Filipino pulchritude and talent on stage and pop entertainment today, in fact: Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo, Carla Guevara-Lafortesa, Cherie Gil, Eula Valdes, Ima Castro, Jay Valencia-Glorioso, even ingenues such as Sitti Navarro and Yanah Laurel.

Whenever these ladies occupied their respective perches up and down the multilevel set, a stunning vision materialized—that of a grand grotto on which the lone male character, the film director Guido Contini (Jett Pangan), seemed to have arranged the many women in his life, goddesses to be displayed, worshipped, fetishized and also, whenever needed, kept at a safe, sterile remove.

Debonair and dissolute

The confusion, on the other hand—well, where to begin? “Nine” isn’t the most cohesive musical to start with, its individually distinct songs for each character or set piece adding up to a sprawling, revue-like (if also stylish and adventurous) whole. That already fuzzy center, however, just about disappeared here with fatal miscasting.

Pangan as Guido, the tormented, midlife-flustered filmmaker that Marcello Mastroianni originated in “8 1/2,” faced a rather insurmountable problem. For the part, “You need a man who is handsome and never seems to have given it a thought,” declared Roger Ebert (quite apt that the best appraisal of the part of a film director came from a film critic).

Both Raul Julia and Antonio Banderas, the 1982 original and the 2003 revival Guidos on Broadway, embodied Latin fire and sensuality, which made them persuasive choices to inhabit the role of a world-famous Italian auteur immobilized, at 40, by a high-pressure life of fame, booze, art, women, money and all that Catholic guilt.

Guido, in other words, called for debonair and dissolute in equal measure; Pangan could do neither. Offstage, this man appears to be the steadiest, squarest rock star there is (Pangan and his rock band The Dawn are going as strong as ever three years shy into their third decade). That unflappable persona, alas, bled into and subverted his Guido at every turn.

Lovely menagerie

Pangan (exceptional a mere four months ago in “Rock of Ages,” also by Atlantis) did sing the score faultlessly. Yet whether he was doing an ironic musical soliloquy (“Guido’s Song”) or tearing himself apart over sin and sexuality (“The Bells of St. Sebastian”), he barely managed to skim even the shallow edges of his character’s ennui and despair.

He could’ve compensated with his Don Juan side; Guido is Italian, after all. (“If you want to make a woman happy,” so he learned as a boy, “you rely on what you were born with. Because it is in your blood.”) But there was none of the charming, erotic, flirty nature that would, at the very least, explain why this man was able to attract this menagerie of lovely, formidable women squawking all over him. Sans passion—libido—on Guido’s end, “Nine” made no sense.

The musical is essentially an egomaniac artist’s extended nervous breakdown, the song-and-dance explosions serving as overlapping interludes of reality, memory and fantasy in his head. One could imagine, say, Nonie Buencamino (Fredrik in Garcia’s 2010 staging of “A Little Night Music”) lending this role more manic, actorly weight.

Without it—with Pangan’s exertions unable to evoke a genuine sense of creative rut and inner aridity—the musical’s resolution, where Guido is saved from self-destruction by his nine-year-old self, felt unearned, the emotional journey that would have justified all that angsty jazz ending just this side of spurious.

Insubstantial singing

Still, if it’s any consolation to Pangan, he wasn’t the only one shoehorned into an ill-fitting role. Valdes, luminous as Guido’s movie-star muse Claudia Nardi, simply couldn’t sing her part—and what heartbreak that her character had the musical’s most ravishing song (“Unusual Way”).

From Valdes’ first two solo notes early in the first act, when she called out Guido’s name in what sounded like a hurriedly primed semi-classical voice, one instinctively felt Valdes was in for a struggle.

Not that she couldn’t sing. The long-running “Zsazsa Zaturnnah Ze Muzikal” was proof enough that she possesses adequate pipes for the demands of musical theater. But there she tackled lite soul and pop; this one called for something quite beyond Valdes’ range.

In the Broadway revival, Laura Benanti’s glistening soprano went a long way toward giving “Unusual Way” its due. Here, not only was Valdes’ voice tense and thin; she went distressingly flat, while holding the note besides, at the end of the long ascending line, “You’re the reason WHY…”