After Vincent van Gogh, perhaps the artist who was least appreciated in his short, tragic life--only to be revered decades later--was Amedeo Modigliani. After much illness, he died in 1920 at age 35, leaving behind a child and pregnant girlfriend who killed herself the next day. Dennis McIntyre's 1978 play, which covers a brief period in 1916 during the artist's life, is helmed by the usually reliable director Elina de Santos and stars frequent TV actor Robert Cicchini, who appeared on 24 and CSI this month. It's difficult to understand, given their track records, why the director or actor would have agreed to partake in a revival of a script that reveals nothing new or even interesting about the artist. And, to make matters worse, de Santos and her cast have chosen to exaggerate the supposed dramatic moments as much as possible, which quickly becomes embarrassing to witness.
The story involves a broke and depres-sed Modigliani (Cicchini), who hasn't painted in several months. He learns from his inept dealer Leopold Zborowski (Daniel Nathan Spector) that the wealthy and influential collector Guillaume Cheron (Thomas Kopache) is interested in buying some of his work. Modigliani shares the good news with his girlfriend and sometimes-model Beatrice Hastings (Susan Ziegler), who insists that he see Cheron himself and not leave it up to the bungling Zborowski. Besides Beatrice, Modigliani's closest companions are artists Maurice Utrillo (Dylan Kussman), who is always drunk and rambling, and Chaim Soutine (Graham Miller), who talks only about painting still lives of poultry.
Plays in which little happens can be interesting, but in this case it's merely annoying. McIntyre's script attempts to create drama by turning every moment into an overwrought argument worthy of reality TV. No director could salvage this work; but, instead of trying to balance the self-indulgent script by being understated, de Santos has her actors screaming and stomping, which highlights only the lack of motivation behind their actions. The performances, Cicchini's and Kussman's in particular, are Method acting on steroids. Cicchini screams half his lines, and he rambles so much that it's hard to know whether or not he's improvising. Kussman's characterization as a drunkard hits only one emotional tone and quickly becomes monotonous. There is no explaining why Circus Theatricals, which in general produces the classics, went in this misguided direction. It was a mistake.