Gigi (Broadway Musical)

"A shower of soap bubbles descends upon the audience at the finale of the pretty and pleasant revival...The current production has now been cleverly bleached of lechery... These changes smartly align the material with our more enlightened times. What the production’s creators cannot do, unfortunately, is plump up the thin story or elevate the quality of the score." Full Review

"Happily, the Broadway “revisal” that just opened does a fine job retooling the plot so it’s more in line with modern ideas about women and romance...Director Eric Schaeffer has given the story an elegant casing...This honorable 'Gigi' may be a good pick if you can’t get into 'Wicked' on Take Your Daughter to the Theater Day." Full Review

"That stage musical is now being revived in a heavily revised and awkwardly sanitized adaptation by Heidi Thomas...The score doesn't serve the story that Thomas is trying to present...There are few textures in director Eric Schaeffer's perfunctory staging...The material alone, capably done, should at least provide some fizz. For the most part, this production merely fizzles." Full Review

"The dumbed-down book and hard-bitten direction keep dragging the show back to our own thin-skinned age...Who hasn’t lost their minds in this ill-conceived adaptation? The designers, for sure, have held their own. But if the physical look of the show suggests Paris, whenever someone opens his mouth, we’re dragged back to America, where nice people don’t do naughty things." Full Review

"Neither natural force nor chemistry, alas, is much in evidence at this fizzless toast to Parisian romance in the Belle Époque. Eric Schaeffer’s revival rescues the show from the dustbin of history and moves it to a recycling bin of the present...this 'Gigi' is inoffensive to a fault...It merely feels generic." Full Review

"The attempt to turn such a property into a girl-power fantasy has left it more perverted than ever, and altogether unworthy of its name...The production’s desperation to appeal to tweens instead of their parents results in a disastrous if not deliberate misreading of the tale...how painful it is, rereading the original, to see how much intelligence has been lost." Full Review

"The feeble feminist revisionism only points up the musical’s problems...The orchestra sounds wonderful and some of the songs are a treat...Too bad about the story. And the arch and sincere tonal confusion. And the star. This is some very flat champagne." Full Review

"The new revival of 'Gigi' too often feels akin to dirty linen that’s been put through the wash too many times; it’s clean now and has a sheen, but it’s threadbare, intellectually and emotionally...One leaves the theater with the overwhelming impression of an underwhelming entertainment, each element of which has been done better elsewhere." Full Review

"There is a positively Walt Disney quality running throughout the production...This is a 'Gigi', unfortunately, a sleight of hand production that tries to be all things to all people so that you can bring your daughters to the theatre – because in the end the gal gets her man and keeps her honor. The result is a rather bland soufflé that is too hard on the outside and too soft at the center." Full Review

"Lukewarm champagne...A lazy eye roll is about the most extreme reaction likely to be provoked by this pretty but charm-deficient revival in a wanly unatmospheric Belle Epoque Paris...Watching this rather mechanical reworking of 'Gigi', the suspicion arises that its weaknesses lie not only in the treatment but in the material itself, which is full of dreary patter songs that echo those from My Fair Lady but have minimal impact." Full Review

"The stage version of the 1958 MGM movie musical 'Gigi' is a good example of a "why musical" -- a tolerable but ultimately pointless adaptation that adds little to, and is inferior than, the source upon which it is based...The production has an elegant look and lively movement but nevertheless feels empty and stalled." Full Review

"A woefully cheap travesty of the gloriously romantic film has now opened at the Neil Simon...There's no reason to itemize the myriad unfortunate variations, although it's necessary to mention some that will likely both infuriate and amuse fans of the film...On the day 'Gigi' officially begins, the Yale School of Drama announces two new scholarships as gifts from the Frederick Loewe Foundation. It's a safe bet that neither of them will go to anyone connected with this enterprise." Full Review

"The new production of 'Gigi' is a fascinating exercise in exploring just how far a revival can go — and how far it shouldn't. As pretty as a Victorian picture postcard and just as deep...If you're able and willing to turn off your brain for two and a half hours, it's possible to have a perfectly inoffensive time exposing yourself to what works and accepting the rest of this 'Gigi' on its own, muddled terms." Full Review

"Anemic, sterile — and, at times, rather creepy...This is a revival demonstrably afraid of sexuality. But if everyone is so nervous about seduction, then you really don't have a "Gigi," which has romance and seduction at its core. The French are better at walking these murky paths along the River Seine. This "Gigi" has no idea how to proceed with its own material...Maybe the entire enterprise was hoping for too much, but wit, style, panache and truth would all have helped Gigi on the stairway... Full Review

"One wonders why anyone would even bother to dust off this less-than-classic 1973 work. No compelling answer emerges...Performances are all over the place...As musical gems go, 'Gigi' is not Tiffany — it’s Jared." Full Review

"There are no surprises, of either the negative or the especially positive sort...We were all doused with soapy Champagne bubbles at the curtain, which somehow seemed apt." Full Review

"For 11-year-old girls, 'Gigi' is very pretty and nice. For much of the rest of us, this disconcertingly wholesome new version is very pretty and bland...Sanitized, flattened and sentimentalized from stylish sophistication to what feels like a cornfed love story...This never was top-drawer Lerner and Loewe. But it had great style along with some remarkable songs. The style is much missed." Full Review

"They've taken out the creepy factor, but they've taken out the zing, too...All the parts are good. They just, maddeningly, don't add for a stunning show Both acts end rather unremarkably, like a fallen soufflé and the passion between the two lovers at the story's center never seems to really boil...Here, it's all about the bubbly Champagne. Everyone keeps singing about it but when it arrives, it's lukewarm and flat. Thank heaven for other choices." Full Review

'Gigi' has been scrubbed and polished so that its heroine is now sassy, headstrong, and spunkier than a barrel of Disney princesses...There’s nothing terribly risqué or even controversial about her situation anymore...The lessons Gigi receives from her Aunt Alicia on serving tea and eating crustaceans don’t lead to a transformation in her character. Indeed, they’re as tedious for us to watch as Gigi claims they are." Full Review

"I'm not a fan of the 1958 film "Gigi." But if I were, I'd be pretty sore about the lump of a musical that's been made from it...Without comparing it to the film, the musical manages to fail all on its own...Directed sluggishly by Eric Schaeffer, with rote dances, the musical tries hard to be joyous, but seldom lifts itself above dull...'Gigi' is the night the Champagne went flat." Full Review

"'Gigi' boasts classic orchestrations, gorgeous costumes and appealing dance numbers. It’s a delightful production." Full Review

"“Gigi” is a flawed musical about a Pyrrhic victory, the triumph of a feisty young woman groomed to be a sexual trophy who ends up becoming a rich man’s trophy wife instead...This revamped stage version remains a less than fully satisfying experience...the central love story is a flimsy chassis for such a big vehicle...The last version of 'Gigi' to come to Broadway was a bust; if it does make it this time, the show’s producers no doubt will be thanking heaven for little girls." Full Review

"The new Broadway production of 'Gigi' begins with a giddy orgy of pastels. Dancers clad in candy-colored costumes flood the set, which paints gay Paree (circa 1900) in bright, scrumptious hues. The choreography is exhilarating, the mood buoyant...If only the fun would last. Unfortunately, in her current incarnation, the heroine is showing signs of age, and self-consciousness." Full Review

"Oh, Gigi. I’m not sure there’s enough champagne in all of France to keep me buzzed through two-and-a-half hours of your romping through Paris and a side trip to Trouville. That’s not to be said a relatively jovial evening can’t be had in your company, but it’s more like sipping from a cup of sparkling cider than a bottle of Veuve Clicquot...You’ve got a recipe for a perfectly fine—if not totally memorable—evening of theater." Full Review

"How do you solve a problem like "Gigi"?...Director Eric Schaeffer tries to distract us from the way political correctness has sanitized the story and made it soppier while lessening the stakes...A solution to 'Gigi' has not been found... It's the music that tempts us back to "Gigi," and hearing the score cascade from a live orchestra is an undeniable treat. But in an attempt to bring the story up to 21st century standards, the new 'Gigi' only seems more dated." Full Review