Susan Granger’s review of “Gigi” (Neil Simon Theater: April, 2015)
Back in 1944, French novelist Colette wrote a naughty novella about a naïve Parisian teenager being groomed by her grandmother for a career as a high-class courtesan and her unexpected relationship with Gaston, the worldly, wealthy playboy who eventually marries her.
It became a 1949 French film before Anita Loos (“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”) adapted it for the stage, introducing gamine Audrey Hepburn in the title role. In 1958, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe (“My Fair Lady”) revised it, adding music for Vincent Minnelli’s opulent screen version, starring Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan and Maurice Chevalier, which won nine Oscars, including Best Picture. In 1973, Lerner and Loewe attempted a stage musical, which flopped.
Now, British playwright Heidi Thomas (BBC’s “Call the Midwife”) and director Eric Schaeffer (“Follies”) have drained every drop of Gallic charm out of Lerner & Loewe’s concept, sanitizing Colette’s unsavory story and re-casting it with bland, squeaky-clean Americans who don’t even attempt a French accent.
Instead of celebrating romance in an era when women, unfortunately, had few options, Thomas and Schaeffer turn it into a negotiated, antiseptic liaison between a somewhat dimwitted, 18 year-old tomboy and a rich, diminutive suitor who is close to her own age.
As giggly Gigi, perky Disney princess Vanessa Hudgens burbles and belts with “High School Musical” effervescence, while the ultra-sophisticated boulevardier Gaston Lashille (Corey Cott from “Newsies”) has become a bumbling, science nerd, nicknamed the Sugar Prince.
Gigi’s influential grandmother, Madame Alvarez (Victoria Clark), now sings “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” along with her gold-digging great-aunt Alicia (Dee Hoty), while Gaston’s irascible, elderly uncle Honore (Howard McGillin) acts as the suave narrator.
There’s a touch of the old magic when Victoria Clark (“Cinderella”) and Howard McGillin (“Phantom of the Opera”) warble the wistful “I Remember It Well,” followed by Clark’s heartfelt “Say a Prayer.”
While Derek McLane’s iron-lattice art nouveau set, Natasha Katz’s lush lighting and Catherine Zuber’s gowns evoke the Bois de Boulogne and Grande Palais in 1900s Paris, Joshua Bergasse’s clunky, overly acrobatic choreography is far from anything seen in the Belle Epoque.
To say that this revival of “Gigi” on Broadway is a colossal disappointment is an understatement.