From “High School Musical” to Broadway musical, Vanessa Hudgens has been announced as the star of “Gigi,” which will premiere on the Great White Way in 2015, the producers announced on Wednesday.
The Broadway-bound revival of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe’s classic musical set in Paris at the turn of a century, following the friendship between a teenage courtesan-in-training and a rich playboy whose feelings naturally turn romantic.
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The new production will be directed by Eric Schaeffer, in a re-envisioned adaptation by Heidi Thomas. Joshua Bergasse (On the Town, “Smash”) will choreograph the production.
Hudgens appeared in a staged reading of the musical back in June. “From the moment we met Vanessa, we knew we found our Gigi,” director Schaeffer commented. “She is smart, gorgeous, a wonderful singer and is so luminous on stage. You cannot take your eyes off of her.”
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“Gigi” will play a pre-Broadway engagement in the Eisenhower Theater at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. from Jan 16-Feb 12, 2015, with opening night set for Jan 29. The show will open on Broadway in 2015 following the Kennedy Center engagement.
The film on which the stage adaptation is based won 9 Academy Awards in 1959 and is considered the last of the great MGM screen musicals of the 1950s.