Reviews 2003
Reviews 2003
✭✭✭✭✩
music by Frederick Loewe, book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, directed by Richard Monette
Stratford Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford
May 29-November 1, 2003
"Musical Champagne"
The musical "Gigi" is a bit of fluff, devoid of pretension, but it is a highly enjoyable bit of fluff. MGM wanted to capitalize on the success of Lerner and Loewe's "My Fair Lady" (1956) and asked the team to write their next musical for the screen. The 1958 film won nine Academy Awards including Best Picture. In the 1970s Lerner and Loewe were encouraged to turn the film into a stage musical. It opening in 1973 but closed after a disappointing run. The story of a girl brought up to be a courtesan who decides to marry was pretty much the opposite of "relevant" in 1973. Now we don't have to care and can enjoy the show for the delightful entertainment it is.
Though based on a story by the French writer Collette, in many ways the musical seems like a retread of "My Fair Lady" set in Paris instead of London. Both are about the education of a recalcitrant young woman so she can succeed in high society. Both feature a climactic social debut. In both the girl's love-interest is a petulant young man whose self-concern blinds him to the fact he is falling in love. And in both a social and psychological barrier must be overcome for the two to wed--besides class differences in both there is the student-teacher barrier in "My Fair Lady" while in "Gigi" it is marrying an underage best friend who has just reached adulthood.
The show is politically incorrect with a vengeance. Our narrator Honoré is an ageing lecher serially working his way through the women of Paris. His well-known song "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" promotes the queasy notion of viewing children as future sex objects. The women around our heroine Gigi, especially her Aunt Alicia, view their profession of high-society prostitution as a way to material gain. The "rebellion" of Gigi and Honoré's rich nephew Gaston is to support bourgeois values and marry. Fortunately, Lerner's 1973 adaptation shifts the emphasis in the film from sex to money underlined by the addition of the witty sextet "The Contract", and in doing so helps make the unsavory aspects of the story more palatable.
Unlike the Festival's other musical, "The King and I", there is no weak link in the cast. Jennifer Gould is a joy as Gigi and deserves to be the Festival's next musical star. She is not as pouty as Leslie Caron but she does the character a service by showing a strength of will beneath the girlish bubbliness. She also has a lovely voice shown to its best advantage in "Say a Prayer for Me Tonight". Dan Chameroy is a clear improvement over Louis Jourdan as Gaston Lachailles. He both more youthful and less aloof, making his friendship with the young Gigi more likely and les patronizing. Chameroy gives us real singing, not Jourdan's talking to music, that lifts his numbers, especially the title song, to operettic heights.
Neither James Blendick as Honoré nor Domini Blythe as Mamita can efface Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold in their finest film roles. Blendick's French accent comes and goes, disappearing entirely when he sings. But he musters enough charm as the old rogue that we gladly accept him, and he has a strong voice to put across such numbers as "I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore". Blythe doesn't attempt to recreate Gingold's eccentricities but as a result is much more believable as a former courtesan. She is excellent at conjuring up a sense of wistfulness that gives the frothy show some semblance of substance. Her duet with Blendick, "I Remember It Well", is a real treat.
Lerner has beefed up the role of Gigi's domineering Aunt Alicia making her even more of a Parisian Lady Bracknell than in the film. Patricia Collins rises to the challenge magnificently. Her haughty demeanour and razor-sharp sense of timing are impeccable. Since Stratford has adopted the unpleasant Broadway practice of miking the dialogue as well as the singing, someone, should turn down Collins' mike to match the volume level of the other players. Stephanie Graham (Liane), Laird Mackintosh (Manuel the Barber) and Cory O'Brien (the Telephone Installer/Jean-Paul) all do well in their smaller roles.
Richard Monette has directed the show efficiently, bringing a nice balance between its nostalgia and hilarity. However, most of his additions to the script we could do without. His signature screeching cat we've seen far too often, the sneezing fit at the contract signing, the wobbly moulded jelly are more distracting than funny and he makes Liane use her irritating laugh to the point of overkill. Donna Feore's choreography is outstanding from waltzes to can-cans to complex balletic interactions between characters.
Designer Cameron Porteous has thankfully used a palette of pastels rather than the horribly gaudy Technicolor extravaganza of Cecil Beaton's film costumes. His set design includes a revolve facilitating the multiple shifts of scene. Overarching all is an Art Nouveau framework into which panels are inserted to represent different locations. I like the whimsical atmosphere of Raoul Dufy that inspires these panels but it clashes rather badly with Art Nouveau. Porteous should have chosen one style or the other but not both. Lighting designer Kevin Fraser gives the whole work the warm glow of memory. The show is framed with projected credits as in a film that are delightfully done.
On stage "Gigi" is a confection that looks fondly back to the sensibilities of operetta. Anyone seeking mood-lightening escapist entertainment at Stratford need look no farther.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: James Blendick, Domini Blythe, Jennifer Gould and Dan Chameroy.
©2003 Stratford Festival.
2003-06-09
Gigi