STORY STUDY - MEDIUM: THEATER - "Nine"
All photos are from the 1982 original Broadway cast performance
It’s bad enough to have some sort of creative block; But trying to fight through it to reach a last-minute deadline, going through a midlife crisis, and having problems with not just your marriage, but with the other people in your life while you’re supposed to be on vacation, your problem goes beyond words.
Music and Lyrics by Maury Yeston with a book by Arthur Kopit, and based on the Frederico Fellini film 8½, Nine tells the story of director Guido Contini, who is, well… going through everything I just mentioned earlier: He is a director on a deadline to produce a film, specifically a musical, for a producer who’s threatening to sue him if he doesn’t deliver.
As Guido is struggling to find a story for his film, he is disconnected with his wife, Luisa, and is contacted by Carla, his mistress who waiting for her husband to divorce her so she may marry him.
Guido struggles with fantasy and reality, the musical going back and forth with what he sees/imagines versus what’s actually happening. The musical even flashes back to to when he was a nine year old boy, who is a separate character on stage, where he encounters prostitute Saraghina, whom she tells him about love. This character led to his punishment from his mother and the nuns from St. Sebastian, Guido’s Catholic boarding school.
This experience is basically the drive of his entire film career up to the present.
This is going to be difficult explaining about this musical because not only is it about a stage show, but it’s a musical, where it’s expected that I have to talk about the production value, dance sequences, etc. However, I can’t do that with Nine because I’ve never seen any production of it at this point; I only own the book (script). At least with plays, I talk about character because that’s what plays essentially are: character. Musicals, to me anyway, have more to offer in terms of elements compared to plays.
So, that’s what I’ll do: base my opinion on the book alone.
As anyone can tell, Nine is all about one central character and his struggles with the women around him (though apparently, outside of Luisa, Carla, and his mother, there are characters that can be played by either gender.) He’s still a child at heart, unable to understand what love is; specifically, loving women as they are vs. loving women as an idea/muse.
I know I became aware of Nine because of the film adaptation and the film 8½, though which came first, I can’t remember. Either way, it made me want to pick up the book, and is probably one of the earliest stories I bought revolving around filmmaking.
If this character, or even person, is annoying or unbearable to you in real life, chances are this is not the story for you. Sure, there is an positive arc that Guido goes through, but it takes a while to get there.
For everyone else: take a trip to a spa, and check it out.
