The revival of the 1973 musical Gigi, written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, opened this past spring on Broadway at the Neil Simon Theatre. Starring Vanessa Hudgens in the title role, the story tells the tale of a Parisian girl being trained as a courtesan who winds up finding love in the glamorous city. Bringing the glamour and glitz of Paris to Broadway are set designer Derek McLane, lighting designer Natasha Katz, and sound designer Kai Harada.
McLane was tasked with creating the magical world of Gigi for the stage, set in France in the La Belle Epoque period. “I was interested in a few things mentioned in the script: the French passion for engineering and invention in the early part of the 1900s,” says McLane, noting that inspiration for the scenic design came directly from time he spent in Paris. “I have spent a bit of time in Paris and have always loved the Grand Palais and so much of the beautiful ironwork in the city,” he adds. The ornate design, construction, and expanse of the Grand Palais are heavily featured in the set design. “The design of the Grand Palais and the base of the Eiffel Tower became the main engines of the design,” McLane says. “I designed the surround of the set based on those two motifs.”
The show’s scenic design is based around a Grand Palais-influenced atrium: Beaux-Arts arches, portals, and pillars rise to the top of the proscenium, leading the audience to believe there is a central dome above. Complementing the intricately designed atrium is a beautifully ornate central staircase. Placed off-center, the staircase rises in a curved design before splitting off into both stage-left and stage-right. McLane was inspired by a staircase in the Grand Palais and used a few other staircases when creating his design.
An additional design element in the show is the stage deck itself, which McLane treated with an Eiffel Tower motif based on the Grand Palais. “I wanted to give a subtle texture to the floor that mirrored the surround created by the portals, but it has a lot of similarities to the base of the Eiffel Tower as well.”
McLane notes that designing Paris for the stage is not without its challenges. In fact, he calls it “an intimidating task. It comes with some big expectations, and finding a way to meet them is a big challenge. My favorite [moment] might be when Gigi writes the letter to Gaston, and we have her seated at a desk, moving slowly across the stage as she writes and sings. When she gets to the far side of the stage, she releases the letter, and it flutters away from her, sailing up in the sky. It is a lovely moment.” The portals for Gigi were built by Hudson Scenic, and the stairs, deck, and many of the deck units were constructed by PRG Scenic.
The City Of Light
Katz was tasked with recreating the famous City Of Light, both indoors and out. She explains that director Eric Schaeffer and the entire design team wanted the show to be “a love letter to the movie Gigi, to Paris, and to the MGM films of the time. That’s partly why it’s so colorful. We wanted it light and airy, and really to have a feeling of fun to it.” She continues to describe the positive working relationship on the show, adding, “Being in the room with Eric Schaeffer, you laugh 24/7. It is a fantastic working experience. The same with Derek and Cathy [Zuber, costume designer].”
Katz’s design and color palette were inspired by the show’s beautiful scenery and costumes, and, of course, Paris itself. “I had just been there, and knowing I was doing Gigi, I spent a lot of time thinking about it,” she explains. “Paris was not destroyed during WWII, and it was originally built with all the buildings of the same style, and I didn’t know this, but Paris was one of the first cities to adopt gas street lighting. That’s why it’s called the City Of Light, and I definitely took note of that.” She also referred to artwork and photos of Paris from the period. “The sky played a big role in the show, so I looked at many Parisian skies.”
Using a combination of Philips Vari-Lite VL3500Q spots and washes, and ETC Source Four ellipsoidals as her main fixture choices, Katz has achieved a colorful, yet light and airy, design. There’s a sense of a warm and rich skin tone feel from the incandescent fixtures, and the surrounding moving lights fill in with color, depth, and shadow. The result is a beautiful and faithful recreation of early 1900s Paris.
Katz describes the fun she had lighting the scenery, noting how sculptural McLane’s set is. “I just kept modeling and painting,” she says. “We weren’t able to get light through the sculpture, due to lighting positions and the size of the stage, but I often had to use the fixtures as if they were coming through the structure—the use of gobos—pretending to go through the structure.” Using Philips Color Kinetics ColorBlaze TRX fixtures to uplight the structure, she adds, “We put a lot of color on the structure with moving lights and gobos. This show, every scene, seems to have gobos in it. I think it’s really about breaking up the light and keeping it airy. I used leaf patterns for realism and mostly breakup patterns for around the stage.” Completing the stage picture is an upstage cyc that is backlit with a bounce drop.
To help tell the tale of Gigi, Katz uses chandeliers and other conventionals to transform the audience from West 52nd Street to Parisian apartments and Maxim’s restaurant. “Because the unit set and surround has a drop that’s a sky, you have to make a leap that you’re not outside, but it’s pretty clear when an interior piece of scenery comes in, and that’s one of the wonderful things about the set I think,” she says. “There’s this kind of tension between the exterior and interior, and it works so beautifully together. So these practicals not only define the fact that you’re inside, but their physical height also makes it seem more like a room, and I definitely keyed off it in terms of the color, for each of the rooms.”
Using the conventionals to highlight the storytelling and depth of character, Katz describes how she’s used them for two different characters’ settings. “There’s a bohemian character whose apartment doesn’t have a big window,” she says. “That room is always lit by the interior light. Her wealthy sister, who is loaded with money, has big windows and drapes and lots of light floods through the window.”
The team discussed fixture noise during the design and tech phase, but since quieter fixtures weren’t an option, the team decided to move ahead with the Philips Vari-Lite Q series. “The lights are getting quieter, which is fantastic,” says Katz. “I feel terrible about it. Kai is a fantastic sound designer, and he did have to push the levels past where he would have wanted to because he would have wanted a show that sonically does what the incandescent fixtures do for lighting. He’s so wonderful at creating a natural sound, and it’s no question that [noisier moving lights] cause a problem for that.”
Katz’s associate on Gigi is Craig Stelzenmuller, and the moving light programmer is Sean Beach. Stay tuned to read about Harada's sound design in Part Two.
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