Tomboy to courtesan

The 1958 film was based on a short story by Colette and written by Frederick Lowe and Alan Jay Lerner, famed authors of My Fair Lady.

Directed by Vincent Minnelli, costumed by Cecil Beaton and with a cast which included Chevalier, Leslie Caron and Louis Jourdan, it won nine Academy Awards.

Lerner and Lowe turned the film into a stage musical in 1973, adding five new numbers. The musical sounds like a pale imitation of My Fair Lady.

This is not surprising, since it incorporates songs which had been written for My Fair Lady and were cut before it came to Broadway.

Gigi has the same Pygmalion theme of the older man and the younger woman. In the same way that Eliza Doolittle was transformed from a cockney flower girl into a duchess, so is Gigi transformed from a wild tomboy into a courtesan.

Or at least that's the idea. But Gigi, just 16 years old, refuses to follow in the family tradition. She doesn't want to be a courtesan and mistress to the heir of a sugar fortune. She adores the heir and wants to be his wife. Her family is outraged.

The story is set in Paris during La Belle Époque, an era famous for its grandes horizontales, whose lovers were drawn from royalty and the aristocracy. Their affairs, exploits, quarrels, and shootings were recorded daily in the newspapers.  

There are pleasing performances by Thomas Borchert and Lisa O'Hare as the lovers and by Millicent Martin as Gigi's grandmother. Chaim Topol is fine as Honoré, but he can't erase memories of Chevalier. But then who could?

The high comedy scenes with Angela Thorson, who plays the courtesan who tutors Gigi in the art of being a grande horizontale, are amusing, especially when she is teaching her how to recognise fake jewellery and when she is browbeating a lawyer into giving Gigi a fortune. 

Choreographer Stephen Mears, who is usually so inventive, runs out of ideas when faced with endless waltzes and repeats himself ad nauseam.

But it doesn't matter. Timothy Sheader's pretty production is going to give a lot of pleasure to a lot of people.

Plays until September 13. Box office: 0844 826 4242.

ROBERT TANITCH