'Gigi' theater review
5 / 10
The stage version of the 1958 MGM movie musical 'Gigi' is a good example of what the late composer Mary Rodgers called a 'why musical' -- a tolerable but ultimately pointless adaptation that adds little to, and is inferior than, the source upon which it is based...Efforts to flesh out Gigi and her beau Gaston come off as labored...As directed by Eric Schaeffer ('Newsies'), the production has an elegant look and lively movement but nevertheless feels empty and stalled. Hudgens gives the sort of sincere but clumsy performance you'd expect to see in, well, a high school musical. But all things considered, she has been given a near-impossible task of injecting life and charm into what is essentially a two-and-a-half-hour slog.

