198. GIGI. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Maria Karnilova, Alfred Drake.

GIGI [Musical/France/Period/Prostitution/Romance] B/L: Alan Jay Lerner; M: Frederick Loewe; SC: Colette’s novel, Gigi; D: Joseph Hardy; CH: Onna White; S: Oliver Smith; C: Oliver Messel; L: Thomas Skelton; P: Saint-Subber in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Light Opera Productions, Edwin Lester, Producer; T: Uris Theatre; 11/13/73-2/10/74 (104)

Karin Wolfe, Agnes Moorehead.

The popular, multi-Academy Award-wnning, 1958 Lerner-Loewe movie musical Gigi was based on a play adapted from a 1944 novella by French author Colette, set in Paris’s Belle Epoque period. The Lerner-Loewe Broadway musical of the same name was based on their film version, a fairly unusual sequence of derivations. The music and lyrics, of course, were largely plucked from the movie, but several new songs, none very memorable, were added.

Colette wrote of a fin de siècle gamin named Gigi (Karen Wolfe) being educated in the ways of the demimonde by her grandmother, Inez Alvarez (Maria Karnilova, played on screen by Hermione Gingold), and great aunt Alicia (Agnes Moorehead, Isabel Jeans in the movie). The grande dames, themselves once glorious courtesans, are preparing Gigi to become the mistress of a philandering young rake (Daniel Massey, Louis Jourdan on film)—who eventually falls in love with and marries her. Alas, the show failed here to capture anything of the charm so brilliantly evident in the lushly produced film. Instead, it seemed “a little long-winded,” yawned Clive Barnes.

Karin Wolfe, Daniel Massey.

Gigi received a heavy-handed staging that few found especially inventive or diverting. There were mixed opinions on the quality of the décor and costuming, as well as on the dances of Onna White. Some were upset that the production, which had originated on the West Coast and toured to several cities before arriving on Broadway, seemed like a tired road show rather than something freshly minted for the Main Stem.

 

Alfred Drake was, for the majority of the critics, in fine voice and admirably right for the role of Honoré Lachailles, the aging roué brilliantly played by Maurice Chevalier on the screen, but the supporting cast was only moderately effective and Karen Wolfe’s Gigi—the part memorialized on screen by Leslie Caron—was a major letdown.

Karin Wolfe, Maria Karnilova, Daniel Massey.

Walter Kerr and others pointed to book trouble. He commented, “The book has a habit of giving us the scene before or the scene after the particular scene we must see.” Martin Gottfried carped at the show’s “vulgar emptiness,” its “shabby opulence,” and its miscasting and misdirection. John Simon skewered it as “a sinewless stillbirth, worse than dead—despicable.” About the best that could be said of Gigi was Richard Watt’s statement that it “isn’t sensational, but it is an agreeable evening of entertainment.”

Nonetheless, Lerner and Loewe copped the Tony for Best Score; Drake was nominated for a Best Actor, Musical, Tony; Smith gained the same honor for his sets; and Messel for his costumes.