Camden Theatre Review: Gigi

Publications by New Journal Enterprises

Home

Archive

Competition

The Review - THEATRE by SARA NEWMAN
Published: 21 August 2008

All the glory of Gigi’s gay Paris

REVIEW: GIGI
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre

BACK in Hollywood’s heyday the film adaptation of Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette’s novel Gigi would have been a racy affair.
Now, as then, the crowds are drawn by the promise of being transported to the courtesan’s flamboyant Belle Epoque.
Lisa O’ Hare as the bashfully provocative Gigi emerges from puberty unscathed, managing to both retain her “purity” and secure her future without having to trade her wares.
She is refreshingly childish, elfishly rebellious and sings like an angel.
Many double entendres have been enhanced by director and Open Air Theatre supremo Timothy Sheeder, but on the whole this adaptation is true to Alan Jay Lerner’s original witty script.
There is a fantastic scene when Gigi’s shrewd business-minded former courtesan aunt Alicia (played by a formidable Linda Thorson) thrashes out the cost of love with the eligible bachelor Gaston’s legal team.
Giving the case for “male patriotism” is Chaim Topol.
Having once played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Topol has reinvented himself as Honore (originally Maurice Chevalier) in this production. Another stand-out moment is when Mamita (Millicent Martin) and Topol humour the audience with lyrics worthy of Oscar Wilde in “I Remember It Well”.
A clever set design using period obelisks covered in classic Art Nouveau posters employs the all-singing, all-dancing cast in switching Madame Alvarez’s lounge into the seaside or that Paris institution of class and taste known as Maxim’s.
This slick glad-ragged piece of nostalgia is delightfully and deplorably politically incorrect, garish and crude but offers a brilliant cast, plenty of spectacle, song and fun.
Until September 13

Comment on this article.
(You must supply your full name and email address for your comment to be published)

Name:

Email:

Comment:

» A-Z of Theatre
» Local Reviews
» Local Listings
» West End Reviews
» West End Listings
» Theatre Tickets
» Theatre & Hotel Packages