Lawson Taitte

IRVING ­ Technically, ICT Mainstage's revival of Nine is community theater. You'd never know it, since most of the central performances are more committed and more secure than many we get from bigger organizations.

G.J. McCARTHY/DMN

Guido Contini, played by Donald Fowler, is surrounded by the women he has loved during the opening sequence of ICT Mainstage's Nine.

Playwright Arthur Kopit and composer-lyricist Maury Yeston set themselves a formidable challenge when they adapted Federico Fellini's film masterpiece 8 ½ into a stage musical. They kept the basic situation: a filmmaker turning to his own womanizing life for subject matter when he doesn't have a script for his new movie. But they turned it into a stylized piece in which the hero, Guido Contini, has all the many women in his life onstage at once, alternately demanding things from him and surrendering to his blandishments.

Michael Serrecchia has stayed close to original director Tommy Tune's concepts for this Irving revival. More important, he and musical director Scott A. Eckert have worked with the performers (and including the fine pit orchestra) to give it their best.

As Guido, Donald Fowler turns in his finest performance in years. It's full of grand physical gestures, not all of which convince. And at Saturday's reviewed performance, microphone problems kept the audience from hearing some of his lyrics, though he has such a powerful voice that he was never inaudible. His strong singing was matched by strong acting, and this Nine is the better for him.

Except for four young boys, all the other cast members are women, and nearly a dozen of them have important roles. The performers in that group are a striking ensemble; it's only in the tiny parts that we occasionally realize that this is a community production.

Patty Breckenridge stuns as Guido's wife Luisa. The character has a song in each act, and I can't imagine that either has been better sung. Ashley LeGrow is appropriately sexy as the mistress Carla, and Andi Allen is a hoot as the French producer.

Guido's muse, Claudia, has the score's best song, "Unusual Way," and Connie Kegg does it justice. I couldn't help wondering, though, whether Amanda Hart Walker, playing a smaller role, might have sung it even better. Chance Jonas-O'Toole sings up a storm, too, portraying Guido as a child.

But the showstopper comes from Sara Shelby-Martin as Sarraghina, the kindly prostitute who interests the boy Guido and his friends in sex. She brings down the house with "Be Italian," and proves that playing a tambourine can be more erotic than you ever suspected.

PLAN YOUR LIFE Through Aug. 9 at Irving Arts Center's Dupree Theater, Irving. Runs 150 mins. $14 to $17. 972-252-2787, www.irvingtheatre.org.

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