Arlington Friends of the Drama presents
NINE
Music and Lyrics by Maury Yeston and Book by Arthur Kopit
Performance dates: April 10,11,12,17,18,19,24,25,26, 2015
Director/Choreographer: Jennifer Condon Music Director: Mario Cruz
This extraordinary musical tells the story of film director, Guido Contini, and his attempts to devise a plot for his next film as he is being pursued by sexy, beautiful women each clamoring to be loved by him and him alone. He finally decides to use the substance of his life, told through flashbacks, to create a musical version of the Casanova story. Through these flashbacks involving relationships with the women in his life – his mother, the Nuns that schooled him, his mistress, and a prostitute among others – we watch him drift towards a nervous breakdown (what we would call a mid-life crisis today) from which he is held back by the support of his wife, Luisa. What makes this piece outstanding is the richness with which it has been imagined and the way all the pieces fit together. This masterpiece owes its life to the worlds of opera, concert, and musical theatre; it defies categorization.
