Freud Playhouse to show musical “Gigi” a love story in 1900 Paris
Gigi
Through Feb. 27
Freud Playhouse, $60
By Coleton Schmitto
Feb. 15, 2011 12:07 a.m.
“There are some who will not marry, and there are some who do not marry.”
This opening statement, made by the character Honore, captures the theme of Reprise Theatre Company’s latest musical production, Lerner and Loewe’s “Gigi,” which will open today at Freud Playhouse in Macgowan Hall.
In 1900 Paris, many women were trained to become mistresses rather than wives. This includes the character Gigi, a precocious young girl who is born into a family of courtesans and is expected to follow the same path. However, as she attempts to detach herself from this social stigma, she finds herself at a crossroads, forced to choose between the man she loves and self-liberation.
The show is under the direction of nine-time Emmy Award-winning director and writer David Lee. Additionally, the original score, written by the composer-lyricist duo Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, won a Tony Award in 1974.
However, the production was only briefly on Broadway during the 1970s and hadn’t been done professionally until 2008 in London. Christine Bernardi Weil, the company’s managing director, notes how important it is to make sure the performance is relatable to the modern viewer.
“I think a great piece of art is one that has transcended its time period. Gigi is not (just) about France in 1900. It’s about love and how people define (their) values, image and personality. These are things that people still deal with on a daily basis,” Bernardi Weil said.
Reprise Theatre Company, founded in 1997, is a professional not-for-profit theater company based in Los Angeles that is distinguished for taking obscure musicals and resurrecting them as modern and socially relevant performances. Having worked on 20 shows with Reprise Theatre Company, Jill Gold, the production stage manager for “Gigi,” said that Reprise doesn’t typically do musicals that one could see a million times over. Rather, they try to do shows that have been unsuccessful or that haven’t been recently done.
The cast consists of a diverse medley of star performers. Lisa O’Hare and Millicent Martin, who were a part of the 2008 London cast, play the respective roles of Gigi and Mamita for a second time. However, the majority of the cast members are new to the musical, as the artistic director of Reprise, Jason Alexander, had to obtain the script from London himself.
William Atherton, whose most recent work in musical theater was done more than 20 years ago alongside Gilda Radner in George Abbott’s “Broadway,” will be portraying the high-class gentleman, Honore.
“Reprise asked me to do (the show), and I haven’t done a musical in a number of years, so I said yes, with terror in my heart,” Atherton said.
According to Bernardi Weil, the musical composition is just as important as a talented cast.
“The music is gorgeous, but I think that within the production, there’s a really good attentiveness to the lyrics. The lyrics in this show are really witty and intelligent and reveal so much about this culture and how they lived. To me, that’s the mark of a great musical theater performance.”
Bernardi Weil said that the show aims for an emotional appeal, with an emphasis upon the performance before the props. However, according to Gold, that is not to say that the visuals in this musical are any less than stimulating.
“This is a more traditional musical theater kind of look. (The costumes are) very ornate; it’s very decorative. It’s very reminiscent of Paris in the 1900s. We do minimal sets because the orchestra is onstage as well, but the costumes, especially in this (show), are period and grand,” Gold said.
