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The Acton Off-Broadway Theatre Review: Adult Film’s Cimino’s Defeat

By Acton

Cimino’s Defeat (writer Eric Faris, directors Sam Cini and Ryan Czerwonko) depicts an out-of-control movie director and the chaotic studio heads behind the calamitous bomb “Heaven’s Gate” with the precision of an up-close magic act. We join the scene in progress, finding our seats in an upstairs parlor where David (Joey D’Amore) strums a guitar, developing a theme for the film. It’s a moment of creative concentration otherwise absent in the stampede to make and market a movie that would become shorthand for disaster.

Michael Cimino is red hot (and knows it) after his masterpiece The Deer Hunter wins 5 Oscars, including Best Picture and Director. He calls his next shot: a grand, radical reimagining of the Western inspired by the historical massacre of immigrants by a powerful corporation. Anticipating another financial windfall and artistic triumph, his studio gives him free rein to go west, sending more and more money while producers dream of spectacular promotions and headlines in Variety. Eventually, they look up to realize, in panic, that the budget has quadrupled and Cimino has stopped returning their calls.

Although we might suspect the general arc of the story from the title if nothing else, the tragedy of Cimino’s Defeat is invigorated by provocative casting, whiplash twists in place and time, and a clarity of movement and expression, costume and lighting that nimbly orchestrates our attention. Cimino is portrayed in the present by Hannah Hale, and in flashback by Tad D’Agostino, a choice that conveys his transformation from cocky asshole to regretful has-been. Both wear his signature aviators and feathered hair, resembling the director at various points in his life, and play their distinct roles with panache.

The rest of the excellent cast nails the look and expressive sensibility of 1970s films like Network, Annie Hall, and Fedora. Matthew Zimmerman is great as a forlorn, sabotaged writer, as is Kristiana Priscantelli playing two characters in awe of Cimino: a wide-eyed ingenue in the present and a protective acolyte in the past. Gia Bonello is commanding as a brash and ambitious rising star. Jeremy Cohen is fantastic as an increasingly panicked studio executive, alternating between bravado, desperation, and tending to his libido. Trevor Clarkson is a wild clown in a big suit, channeling Tex Avery keyframes as he desperately throws himself around the room. Joey D’Amore returns as the pass-around boy toy David, devoured by the others as they circle a communal table of cocaine, alcohol, and junk food.

In telling the story of creatives who wildly over-promise, over-spend, and under-deliver, Adult Film (Lives of Others, The Cherry Orchard) has created a lean production that punches above its weight, using misdirection and deftly timed lighting cues to materialize dynamic exits and entrances within an intimate space. Well-tailored costumes (Madeline Rostmeyer) and a handful of well-chosen props create a satisfying atmosphere of Hollywood offices and late nights wandering ghostly hallways. The stuntwork, especially between Trevor Clarkson and Kristiana Priscantelli, has an all-in physicality, as do the athletic, carnal sex scenes between Bonello, D’Amore, D’Agostino, and Cohen. Cimino’s Defeat is a brisk, hearty show that has a lot of fun on the way to catastrophe.