Nine

About the show

Guido Contini, a famous Italian film director, has turned forty and faces double crises: he has to shoot a film for which he can't write the script, and his wife of twenty years, film star Luisa del Forno, may leave him if he can't pay more attention to their marriage. Luisa's efforts to talk to him are drowned out by voices in his head: voices of women in his life whom he has loved ("Overture delle Donne"). In an attempt to find some peace and save the marriage, they go to a spa near Venice ("Spa Music"), where they are immediately hunted down by the press with intrusive questions about their marriage and Guido's imminent film project, which he has not told Luisa about ("Not Since Chaplin"). As Guido struggles to find a story for his film, he becomes increasingly preoccupied, his interior world sometimes becoming indistinguishable from reality ("Guido's Song"). His mistress Carla arrives in Venice, calling him from her hotel room ("A Call from the Vatican"). His producer Liliane La Fleur, former vedette of the Folies Bergeres, insists he make a musical, an idea which veers off into a vivid fantasy ("The Script / Folies Bergeres"). All the while, Luisa watches, the resilience of her love being consumed by anxiety for him and a gathering dismay about their life together ("My Husband Makes Movies / Only With You"). In Guido's imagination, he encounters his mother bathing a nine-year-old boy—his own young self ("Nine"). The vision leads him to re-encounter a moment on a beach with Saraghina, a prostitute to whom he went as a curious child, sneaking out of his Catholic boarding school St. Sebastian, to ask her to tell him about love. Her answer, to be yourself ("Ti Voglio Bene / Be Italian"), and the dance she taught him reminds the forty-year-old Guido of the consequences of that night—punishment by the nuns and rejection by his mother ("The Bells of St. Sebastian"). Unable to bear the adults, the little boy runs back to the beach to find no one. Back into the present, Guido is on a beach once more. With him is Claudia Nardi, a film star and his muse, who has flown in from Paris for him; however, she does not want the role. He is enraged by her rejection. Claudia loves him but wants him to love her as a person and not a "spirit", which he cannot do. She calls him "My charming Casanova!", thereby involuntarily giving Guido the inspiration he needs ("A Man Like You"). Claudia lets him go ("Unusual Way"), Guido has an idea for a movie set on the Grand Canal and cast with every woman in his life ("The Grand Canal"). During the filming of the movie, Carla races onto the set to announce her divorce and her delight that they can be married, only to be rejected by Guido in his fixation on the film. Luisa is enraged and saddened by his use of their intimacy and her words as a source for the film. Guido keeps the cameras rolling, capturing the desolation of the women he loves ("Cut, Print!"). The film is dead. Carla leaves with a broken heart ("Simple"). Claudia sends a letter from Paris to say that she has married. Luisa ends their marriage ("Be On Your Own"). Guido is alone and directionless, contemplating suicide ("I Can't Make This Movie"). As the gun is at his head, he is interrupted by his nine-year-old self telling him it is time to grow up and move on, and Guido surrenders the gun ("Getting Tall"). The women return, this time to let him go, with the exception of Luisa ("Reprises"). Guido feels the aching void left by the only woman he will ever love. In the 2003 Broadway production, as the boy leads the women off, Luisa steps into the room on the final note, and Guido turns toward her.