Zuber’s palette is high on reds and purples, the fin-de-siècle shapes are elegant,Īnd the hats are spectacular. The basic set is an iron grilleĮchoing the Eiffel Tower, with a double-pronged staircase upstage before a cyclorama and small pieces that provide the frames for the interior scenes, withĭoors and silk curtains and cunning patchworks of wall hangings. Schaeffer, the choreographer Joshua Bergasse (who staged the numbers in the current On the Town), and the three designers (Derek McLane on sets,Ĭatherine Zuber on costumes and Natasha Katz on lighting), have given it a magnificent look, and it moves like a dream. Version at the Neil Simon Theatre has been reworked by the English playwright and screenwriter Heidi Thomas, and, by contrast, it feels complete, thought through. I remember thinking the musical was underdeveloped and more or less pointless. Prayer for Me Tonight”), which seemed to add insult to injury. Loewe added five songs, but they weren’t at the same level as the original score, and unaccountably three from the picture were canned (including “Say a I saw it in Toronto in lateġ973, with Alfred Drake as Honoré, Daniel Massey as Gaston, Agnes Moorehead as Alicia and Maria Karnilova as Mamita. The movie musical came back to the stage in the early seventies, touring before opening, without much distinction, on Broadway. The musical added a romantic past for Honoré and Mamita that gave Chevalier and Gingold an opportunity to perform a tongue-in-cheek nostalgicĭuet, “I Remember It Well,” one of several gems in the Lerner-Loewe score. Invented by Audrey’s screenwriter, Pierre Laroche: Gaston’s uncle, Honoré Lachaille, still an irresistible roué in his sixties, played by MauriceĬhevalier. The movie, which garnered Oscars for just about everyone involved except the actors, lifted a character She’s cheating on him with her skating instructor. Gaston, Hermione Gingold as Mamita, Isabel Jeans as Aunt Alicia, and Eva Gabor as Gaston’s fling of the moment, Liane, whom he breaks with when he finds Most famous incarnation, a movie musical directed, in a plush, luscious style, by Vincente Minnelli and featuring Leslie Caron as Gigi, Louis Joudan as Seven years later, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe turned it into its Anita Loos did a skillful stage adaptation in 1951 that brought Audrey Hepburn to the attention of BroadwayĪudiences (two years before she became a movie star in Roman Holiday). There was an enjoyable movie version in 1949, directed by Jacqueline Audry, with Danièle Delorme as Gigi and two celebrated French actresses, Yvonne deīray and Gaby Morlay, as the two older women. The story is a delightful comedy about the tension between social and sexual mores on the one hand and emotional authenticity on the other, andĪbout impulses that flout convention – and upset the apple cart everyone has been riding without thinking much about it. But Gigi has a mind of her own and, though she has fallen in love with Gaston, she resists the life of a rich man’s
(Her mother took another path: she’s a singer in the ensemble of the Opéra Comique andīarely present in her daughter’s life.) When Gaston Lachaille, a millionaire playboy who, through his friendship with Mamita, has been a sort of bigīrother to Gigi all her life, realizes that she’s grown into a beautiful and desirable young lady, Alicia and Mamita make complicated legal arrangements Initially it was a story by Colette, written in 1945 and set around the turn of the century,Ībout a teenage Parisienne (the title character) who comes from a family of highly respected courtesans and is being brought up by her grandmother, Mamita,Īnd trained by her great-aunt Alicia to follow in their footsteps. Gigi, which is now being revived on Broadway, has a long lineage. Vanessa Hudgens stars in Gigi, at Broadway's Neil Simon Theatre.
0 kommentar(er)
