Gigi Redux

Gigi reminds us theatregoers have yet to match the security of the wine connoiseur at a Paris cafe. This production of Gigi comes with the same winning label that made a delightful book for Colette, one of the first great musicals by the Lerner and Lowe team that brought Paint Your Wagon (1951), My Fair Lady (1956), and Camelot (1960), and swept nine academy awards in 1958 for the film version. We even see Louis Jourdan, who first achieved popular fame as Gaston, return as Honore, the role immortalized by Maurice Chevalier.

But though the label seems the same, the first taste of Jourdan apparently lip-syncing Chevalier's memorable "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" painfully suggests that this vintage hit has less matured than turned with age.

It matters little that Jourdan has starred in; films as diverse as Madame Bavary, Can-Can, and the Silver Bears, played everyone from a BBC Dracula to a sinister would-be James Bond nemesis in Octopussy. For anyone who has ever seen the MGM movie classic Gigi, Louis Jourdan is Gaston, the inveterate playboy with interminable ennui. To fixate momentarily on his Gallic features summons up visions of Jourdan-Gaston beside the original Honore (Maurice Chevalier) forever repeating. "It's a bore."

"Think of the Eiffel Tower."

"How many stories was it yesterday?"

"Ninety."

"And tomorrow?"

"Ninety."

"It's a bore."

It is hard to look at Jourdan now and imagine that much has really changed. Grandfather and counselor d'amour to Gaston, and narrator of the show, Honore calls himself "old enough to know my faults, but young enough to still enjoy them." It is only half-true of Jourdan. With jet black hair and the perfect aristocratic amble, he looks young enough to enjoy almost anything...anything, that is, but his role as Honore. He sings "I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore" as though he believes the lines even less than we. That he appears to lip-sync this and "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" seems all the sadder because he can perform "I Remember It Well", with "Mamita" (Taina Elg) with too much meaning: we all remember another Jourdan and another Gigi all too well.

Rather it is the crepe-suzette thin plot that seems so unfamiliar. A kind of 1958 American version of a 1920's Parisian romance revived for a 1984 audience, Gigi seems doubly foreign today: its Paris treats the Eiffel Tower practically as a suburb of Maxime's; its romance treats women as...well, this is not the time for a discourse on social history.

Honore Lachailles (Louis Jourdan) narrates the lyrical tale of a (play)boy and his love. To go out with Gaston is to enter the society gossip columns in this Paris as surely as to share drinks with Rona Barret is to bare one's private life in the Hollywood of today. For the Gaston's and Honore's of the world to drive a spurned love into attempting suicide means entree into the choicest of Parisian circles. Girls: they bore Gaston. "It's either yes or no."

Then comes Gigi. If Gaston and Honore want to treat women as little more than the stuff of shopping escapades. Mamita and Aunt Alicia (Betsy Palmer) will gladly help design the set While Honore keeps busy tutoring Gaston in the rules of the game--for status value, little can rival driving a spurned lady to attempt suicide Mamita enlists Aunt Alicia to perform daily finishing lessons seemingly as de rigeur as piano lessons for the varsity social climbers of New York in the 80's, or anytime for that matter.

"The only people who make love all the time," Aunt Alicia tells Gigi, "are liars." Aunt Alicia tells Gigi lots of things. Never accept semi-precious stones: to be caught alive wearing an opal is as offensive to her as to be caught dead in substandard undergarments is to Ann Landers. "Bad table manners," she warns, "have broken up more homes than infidelity."

Betsy Palmer makes the perfect Aunt Alicia, her every movement about the stage a miniature dance, her overflowing charm an endearing antidote to Alicia's more biting lines, her every movement about the stage practically a miniature dance. In what could easily be the most dated and even offensive scene in Gigi, "The Contract Song," where she negotiates Gigi's marriage arrangements with Gaston's lawyer, Palmer establishes herself as the unquestioned star of this show, a brilliant standard that Jourdan never matches.

Jourdan's leading lady in 13 Rue De L'Amour, Taina Elg as Mamita likewise upstages Jourdan here. In fact, Jourdan seems at his best when he and "Mamita" reminisce their past affair. Jourdan looks almost pitiably reassured to here her say. "How strong you were, how young and gay A Prince of Love in every way."

Tom Hewitt deliver the most uneven performance as Gaston. The playboy with a coeur has always been a difficult one, especially when further tainted with heavy ennui. Jourdan never allowed this boredom to turn to bitterness, but like so much else in this production, the bitterness, but ershadows the sweet. Jourdan made even boredom elegant; Hewitt practically expectorates the chorus "It's a bore" as if he were sending his garcon back with some ill-prepared pleasant.

And our love, Gigi? Well, of all the characters he might play out for life, Woody Allen this week wrote in the Times Book Supplement, he would like to play Gigi. The young beauty has always been energetic; Lisa Howard renders her merely hyperactive. Allen may get his chance yet.

It saddens me to write of Gigi thus. The show, she was my first musical love. But though this year the label remains the same, the bottle in which this Parisian tale sings out, belies a performance a pale cousin of its once spectacular self. Gigis past was like sipping fine champagne into dreamy glee, but this Gigi seems somehow like a hangover: I know it should have been fun, but now it all seems too foggy; only this time I really don't think I want to remember.