GIGI. To 13 September.
London.
GIGI
book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner music by Frederick Loewe.
Open Air Theatre Regent’s Park To 13 September 2008.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm.
BSL Signed 28 Aug 8pm.
Runs 2hr 25min One interval.
TICKETS: 0844 826 4242 (booking fee £1 per ticket).
www.openairtheatre.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 14 August.
Elegant triviality rather than sinister undertones on show.
A man on a street-corner watches tourists passing, cocking an appreciative eyebrow when he sees a family with a young daughter. He likes young girls, because they grow into big girls, and he leaves us no doubt what he likes doing with big girls.
An aunt and mother argue with a lawyer over how much a man will have to pay before they’ll let him have sex with their innocent 16-year old relative.
A young philanderer used to cynical, on–the-make women, realises this 16-year old s no longer the gawky girl he’s visited but an attractive young woman, so decides to treat her as he has other women.
Transfer all this into the elegant Belle Epoque Paris of 1901 and there’s pretty much the story of the musical Lerner and Loewe carved out of Collette’s novel Gigi. True, there’s a last minute blink-and-you’ll-miss-it marriage proposal, but it’s entirely unprepared and rather unconvincing.
No wonder old roué Honore describes Paris as a suburb of nightclub Maxim’s, where wealth overlays corruption and decadence with a veneer of glamour. Gigi is either sinister, if you see the skull beneath the skin, or merely a trivial surface.
Timothy Sheader’s Open Air spares that surface no elegance. In the set with its pristine posters on circular street-hoardings, which open out to contrast the bourgeois warmth of Gigi’s home and the mirrored extravagance of her knowing society aunt. Or in the splendid costumes (presumably by designer Yannis Thavoris, and deserving a separate credit), and Stephen Mear’s choreography, with its freeze-frame moments and final-chord tableaux.
Plus performances, from Lisa O’Hare’s finely danced and sung Gigi (though, in profile, she looks over 16), Topol, suave of manner if not over-confident with some lines, as Honore, Thomas Borchert’s Gaston, strong in song rather than subtle in speech, and the contrast between Millicent Martin’s Mamita, black dress with just a thin line of red and Linda Thorson’s Alicia, inducting Gigi into the ways of a bejewelled existence with a colourful swishing authority.
So a plus for Open Air production values, if not for the material they’re here lavished on.
Honore: Topol.
Gigi: Lisa O’Hare,
Gaston: Thomas Borchert.
Liane: Amy Ellen Richardson.
Mamita: Millicent Martin.
Aunt Alicia: Linda Thorson.
Manuel: Richard Pettyfer.
Dufresne: Paul Bentley.
Duclos: David Lucas.
Ensemble: Rachael Archer, Paul Bentley, Jennie Dale, Amy Ellen, Nina French, Francis Haugen, Shaun Henson, David Lucas, Jo Morris, Richard Pettyfer, Zoe Rainey, Myra Sands, Laura Scott, Kate Tydman, Kerry Washington.
Director: Timothy Sheader.
Designer: Yannis Thavoris.
Lighting: Simon Mills.
Sound: Mike Walker.
Orchestrator: Steven Edis.
Musical Director: Phil Bateman.
Choreographer: Stephen Mear.
Assistant choreographer: Jo Morris.
2008-08-18 23:16:16