Broadway’s ‘Nine’ turns Fellini’s ‘8 1/2’ into creative musical at Kennedy Center
In 1963, Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini directed his Oscar-winning masterpiece “8 1/2,” reuniting with actor Marcello Mastroianni (“La Dolce Vita”) as an on-screen proxy for his own creative and personal insecurities.
Two decades later, the film was creatively adapted for Broadway, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1982 and Best Revival of a Musical in 2003, which inspired a 2009 movie musical starring Daniel Day-Lewis.
“I started watching on an international flight then said, ‘I’ll have to watch this another time when I can focus on it.’ It’s really something to study and dig into because it’s really fascinating,” Tony nominee Elizabeth Stanley told WTOP. “Maury Yeston set it to this incredible score, which I think makes it so much more accessible.”
This Friday, “Nine” hits the Kennedy Center from Aug. 2 to Aug. 11 as part of its Broadway Center Stage series.
“This is just special for the Kennedy Center,” Stanley said. “They have this new series produced by Jeffrey Finn called Broadway Center Stage, where they put together this extraordinary group of people and throw together a show. We work really, really hard to do it so quickly and the Kennedy Center is such a special place to be. It’s such an honor to get to be on the stages here, so I think everybody says ‘yes’ because it’s just pretty awesome.”
Adapted for the stage by playwright Arthur Kopit and composer Maury Yeston, the story follows famed filmmaker Guido Contini (Steven Pasquale), who suffers from “director’s block” during production of his latest film. He also struggles with a strained marriage to his neglected wife Luisa (Stanley) as he retreats into his own mind, where women from his past and present bombard his senses and throw reality into question.
“Guido is approaching mid-life, he’s this brilliant filmmaker but he can’t come up with his next script and in recent years he’s not been doing great, so he’s going through this creative struggle of, ‘Do I not have it anymore? Have I lost it? Am I done with?'” Stanley said. “He’s a little bit of a mess in his personal life because he’s emotionally stunted. I play his wife, but he has a mistress, then he has a muse — there are all these other women in his life.”
The hallucinations inspire a unique visual presentation directed and choreographed by three-time Tony winner Andy Blankenbuehler, who follows in the Tony-winning footsteps of the show’s original director Tommy Tune.
“It’s pretty minimal,” Stanley said. “The set is black-and-white, there aren’t a ton of props or scenery, but he uses the bodies on stage to create new spaces and mental visualizations,” Stanley said. “There’s an incredible ensemble of artists who are extraordinary dancers, so they’re doing a lot of storytelling through their movement. Also, the lighting does a lot of storytelling … so, visually, it will be very satisfying for people who are fans of the film.”
Unlike the film, the stage version delivers an array of dazzling musical numbers.
“‘A Call From the Vatican’ is iconic,” Stanley said. “‘Unusual Way’ is so stunning and sounds so beautiful. Shereen Ahmed is singing it and the orchestra here is just fabulous. Lesli Margherita is doing ‘Be Italian,’ which I also think is amazing — those are the Top 3 for me. I’m singing ‘My Husband Makes Movies,’ which is also really fabulous.”
Stanley is herself a Tony nominee, having been nominated for Best Actress in a Musical for the Alanis Morissette rock musical “Jagged Little Pill” (2020), losing to Virginia native Adrienne Warren as Tina Turner in “Tina.”
“It was awesome,” Stanley said. “Diablo Cody wrote this fabulous book that connected the songs of ‘Jagged Little Pill’ and also had a few other iconic Alanis tunes in there, so it was great. In the way that only Diablo can do and Alanis can do, it was a great acting role, there was so much meat there, there was so much stuff going on for the character, so it was dramatic but it was also quite funny, then to get to sing those songs, it was pretty wonderful.”