Review Roundup: NINE Opens at the Kennedy Center

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts production of Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit’slNine, directed and choreographed by 2018 Kennedy Center Honoree and three-time Tony Award winner Andy Blankenbuehler is now playing through August 11, 2024 in the Eisenhower Theater.

Nine stars Steven Pasquale (The Bridges of Madison County, the Kennedy Center’s Guys and Dolls) as Guido Contini, Shereen Ahmed (My Fair Lady) as Claudia, three-time Tony Award nominee Carolee Carmello (1776, Parade) as Liliane La Fleur, Sasha Hutchings (Oklahoma!, Hamilton) as Asa Nisi Masa, Lesli Margherita (Matilda, Dames at Sea) as Saraghina, Academy Award and Tony Award nominee Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Man of La Mancha, Scarface) as Guido’s Mother, Jen Sese (Hamilton, Hair) as Stephanie Necrophorus, Tony Award nominee Elizabeth Stanley (Jagged Little Pill, On The Town) as Luisa Contini, and Michelle Veintimilla (The Visit, Gotham) as Carla Albanese.

They are joined by Allison Blackwell, Dylis Croman, Charlie Firlik as Young Guido, Haley Fish, Paloma Garcia-Lee, Lucia Giannetta, Morgan Marcell, Yani Marin, Georgina Pazcoguin, Marina Pires, and Kamille Upshaw.

This Tony Award–winning Best Musical, suffused with an award-winning score by Maury Yeston and book by Arthur Kopit, is based on the groundbreaking Federico Fellini film 8½. The spectacular musical adaptation features one man and the dozens of women in his life. Celebrated but impulsive film director Guido Contini, succumbing to the pressures of filming his latest epic, suffers a midlife crisis. One by one, women from his past and present—including his mother, his wife, his mistress, and his leading lady—haunt, instruct, scold, seduce, and encourage him.

See what the critics are saying...

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Thomas Floyd, The Washington Post: There’s Luisa, Guido’s long-suffering wife, imbued by Elizabeth Stanley with matter-of-fact resentment and bittersweet regret. Shereen Ahmed is appropriately majestic as the A-lister Claudia, his frustrated muse. Michelle Veintimilla shines in the role of Guido’s needy mistress Carla, performing “A Call From the Vatican” with Marilyn Monroe-esque sultriness. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, an Oscar nominee for “The Color of Money,” lends gravitas to the title song and offers jolts of comic relief as Guido’s mother.

Elliot Lanes, BroadwayWorld: Kennedy Center Honoree Andy Blankenbuehler’s choreography shows his ensemble off to full potential but the Fiddler on the Roof circle at the end was definitely a choice to say the least. Also his concept to have various members of the cast appear as if they were conducting Guido’s story became more of a distraction than a plus.

Jeannette Mulherin, MD Theatre Guide: Director and choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler (a Kennedy Center Honoree and three-time Tony® winner) has assembled a superb cast equally capable of meeting the vocal, dance, and dramatic demands of the show. Notable performances include Claudia Nardi (Shereen Ahmedand) and Guido’s duet “A Man Like You/Unusual Way,” and the dazzling “Folies Bergères” that features Liliane, Guido’s Mother Stephanie (Jen Sese), and Company. Nine-year-old Guido (Charlie Firlik) demonstrates a stage presence and vocal capabilities way beyond his years in “Getting Tall.”

Lisa Traiger, DC Theater Arts: In all, this new Broadway Center Stage production of Nine is exceedingly attractive and determinedly of its times in theme and scope. It’s well-sung, beautifully choreographed, musically strong, and filled with fashionable flair and chic design choices. Each of Guido’s women — his wife, his lover, his movie star, his producer, his mother — has her moment, but this is Guido’s life, his story for all its intrigue and his many flaws. Foremost, Nine scaffolds its singular male protagonist Guido Contini into a Felliniesque 1960s period piece. But it also hews to its early 1980s creation, as well as Fellini’s focus on what British film theorist Laura Mulvey has termed the “male gaze.”

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