Set in the magical world of La Belle Epoque in turn-of-the-century Paris, GIGI is a timeless romantic comedy about a young woman groomed in the custom of her family to be a companion to a bored, wealthy playboy, until the two unexpectedly realize this is in fact true love.
This year marks the 40th Anniversary of the debut of Gigi on Broadway. Lerner and Loewe's Tony Award-winning score was first heard in the 9-time Academy Award-winning Best Picture of the same name, directed by Vincente Minnelli. The movie, which was the last of the classic MGM musicals, was based on the Broadway play by Anita Loos and the popular novella by Colette.
Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's beloved musical GIGI will return to Broadway in a production directed by Tony Award-nominee Eric D. Schaeffer (Follies), in a new adaptation by acclaimed British playwright and Emmy-nominated screenwriter Heidi Thomas ("Cranforde," "Upstairs Downstairs," "Call the Midwife".)
Starring the talented Vanessa Hudgens of 'High School Musical' in her confident Broadway debut, the show, efficiently directed by Eric Schaeffer, has been sanitized, flattened and sentimentalized from stylish sophistication to what feels like a cornfed love story with beautifully ornamented Belle Epoque staircases (by Derek McLane) and gorgeous period costumes (by that wizard, Catherine Zuber)...In making Gaston so close to Gigi's age, however, Heidi Thomas' adaptation robs even a frisson of inappropriate tension from the courtship. Nor does it help to have cast Corey Cott, a drab, boyish actor with a good voice but little charisma, as the playboy whose exploits are legend to all of Paris...While [Hudgens] has the flair of a stage natural and soars through her few ballet sequences in Joshua Bergasse's busy and pedestrian choreography, her voice has the steely, engaging quality of a Disney heroine singing through helium.
The stage version of the 1958 MGM movie musical 'Gigi' is a good example of what the late composer Mary Rodgers called a 'why musical' -- a tolerable but ultimately pointless adaptation that adds little to, and is inferior than, the source upon which it is based...Efforts to flesh out Gigi and her beau Gaston come off as labored...As directed by Eric Schaeffer ('Newsies'), the production has an elegant look and lively movement but nevertheless feels empty and stalled. Hudgens gives the sort of sincere but clumsy performance you'd expect to see in, well, a high school musical. But all things considered, she has been given a near-impossible task of injecting life and charm into what is essentially a two-and-a-half-hour slog.
2015 | Washington, DC (Regional) |
Kennedy Center Production Washington, DC (Regional) |
2015 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2015 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Costume Design | Catherine Zuber |
2015 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical | Victoria Clark |
2015 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical | Victoria Clark |
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