Pullman.vs.Paxton Presents – NINE The Musical as a Benefit for Lambert House! Tony Award Winning Musical – NINE – is the musical adaptation of Federico Fellini’s masterpiece of cinema 8 ½ with music and lyrics by Maury Yeston, book by Arthur Kopit and adapted from The Italian by Mario Fratti. Troubled filmmaker Guido Contini (played by vocal powerhouse Erin Lee Smith) struggles with creative stasis as she attempts to get a new movie off the ground. We follow the fragmented stream of consciousness of Guidos brain presented as a maximalist collage of the mind with inner chaos, a picture book of mental collapse. Images falling from all directions in a vaudevillian way. Overwhelmed by her work and personal life, the director retreats into her thoughts, which often focus on her loves, both past and present, and frequently wander into absurdist territory. As she tries to sort out her many entanglements, romantic and otherwise, Contini finds her production becoming more and more autobiographical and unmanageable.