GIGI Reviews — Page 6

Can we stop the abbreviations? Every time someone refers to ON THE TOWN as OTT, I think of a otter. And OTTC is just confusing. It sounds liker some sort of bank. If you want to abbreviate that show, just call it 20TH CENTURY or something (even though the play it's based on has that title). This season, we'll know what you're talking about.

As for GIGI, I thought the critics were far too generous to Miss Hudgens, and I only saw her lip-sync and look impossibly earnest on Live with Kelly! and Good Morning America. She's about as European as a Harold Arlen torch song with a fraction of the genuine emotion.

Vulture is a ROUGH one but well written

"more perverted than ever, and altogether unworthy of its name."

"a disastrous if not deliberate misreading of the tale"

http://www.vulture.com/2015/04/theater-review-vanessa-hudgens-in-gigi.html

I live near The Kennedy Center so I read all the local reviews when it played here, I was not expecting this thrashing!

Also, it has been said in the "Gigi Previews" thread that lip-syncing did not occur for the GMA performance, so it is highly unlikely that Vanessa lip-synced the Live with Kelly and Michael performance.

Jesse Green wrote the Vulture review. Yes JV92 I agree with you 100%. I usually don't pour over reviews but I had one last spot to fill on my docket for my upcoming NYC trip so I have been doing so to make an informed choice and his was the best written review and a good "read"

Not only does Jesse Green write the most insightful reviews, he also writes incredibly thoughtful articles on the people in the theatre. My favorite of his was the article he did on Kander on the loss of his partner. He also is a great presence on the Theatre Talk season previews.

I'm curious about this idea that the alterations to the script were made in order to attract HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL fans. Weren't these changes planned from the beginning before Hudgens became involved? It's not like the revival was conceived as a star vehicle for Hudgens the way, say, the revival of THE KING & I is a vehicle for O'Hara (and even that's a bit of a stretch). I wonder if the whole HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL angle is being a bit overplayed simply because of Hudgens' involvement.

The GIGI ad I saw when I came into this very thread used one from the New York Times:

"Scrumptious eye-candy"

Sounds like the writer was not up to the task of adapting Colette for 2015. Sounds like every decision she made was the wrong one.

We've seen this before: a writer/director decides to "reinterpret" a classic because the classic is "flawed" and "no longer speaks to a contemporary audience."

But in the end, the writer or director is not as talented or gifted as the original creator or creators of the flawed classic and the end result is a mediocre muddle: Flower Drum Song, Porgy and Bess, On a Clear Day...so many others.

There ought to be test questions for directors and writers-hired-to-rewrite-classics: For Follies, I've always said the test question should be "How do you feel about the ghosts?" Eric Schaeffer's answer undoubtedly would have been something less interesting than Hal Prince or Michael Bennett's answers must have been, and his production was disappointing in that regard.

For Gigi, the question might have been "What do you think, in this day and age, about courtesans?" I think Anita Loos and Vincente Minnelli and Alan Jay Lerner would have given fascinating answers, despite the different times in which they lived.

But It seems like think Heidi Thomas and Eric Schaeffer would have given dull and muddled answers.

Updated On: 4/9/15 at 04:45 PM

Eric Schaeffer’s Broadway track record:

Putting It Together (1999); 101 performances
Glory Days (200; 1 performance
Million Dollar Quartet (2011); 489 performances
Follies (2011); 152 performances
Gigi (2015); ??

Was that 14-month run of Quartet so good and profitable that it justifies hiring him?

Perhaps one problem is that the DC theatre scene seems to have trouble discerning the difference between good and bad (remember how Peter Marks thought that the unbearably amateurish Glory Days was a great show?). And then New York producers fall for their erroneous evaluations of Schaeffer's work?

Updated On: 4/9/15 at 04:56 PM

“Stylish and saucy. GIGI sparkles and twirls.”

Is that really from a review? It makes the character/show sound like a contestant on Toddlers and Tiaras.

DC critics can't be blamed for this transfer. The producers announced they were moving to Broadway before the DC production opened, to lukewarm reviews.