City of Women
Two consecutive projects confirmed Tommy Tune’s vision and versatility. In 1981, Tune directed the American premiere of Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9, his first non-musical. This “comedy of multiple orgasms,” as it was billed, featured a first act set in colonial Africa in 1880 and a second act in contemporary London a century later. Tune staged the first act with sketch-comedy speed and vaudeville humor, as the characters played out their sexual frustrations and transgressed boundaries of race and class. Once again, he used performance tropes of earlier eras to communicate a contemporary viewpoint. His direction of the second act was more somber and thoughtful as the characters, liberated from patriarchal oppression and allowed to express their sexuality freely, search for meaningful connections. While Cloud 9 was enjoying a long and successful run off-Broadway, Tune embarked on Nine, based on Federico Fellini’s film 8½, about a celebrated but creatively stalled Italian filmmaker. Tune insisted that the show be peopled by an all-female cast surrounding the filmmaker. On a stunning white-tiled spa setting made up of stationary boxes, the women—each dressed in black—were summoned from his mind and memories to comment upon and take part in the action. With Nine, Tune established a pattern of staging an entire show around a stationary obstacle (in this case, the boxes)––an obstacle he consistently overcame through imagination and daring. Nine was a stunning directorial achievement that solidified Tune’s stature as a creative mastermind of the Broadway musical.