In the aftermath of the Tony Awards, in which both “The Visit” and “Gigi” went home empty-handed, both musicals announced their respective closings: the former on June 14 and the latter on June 21. Their combined losses will come close to $20 million.From the moment “The Visit” began previews in March, the handwriting was on the wall that the subject matter had little appeal to the general public, despite an impressive pedigree — songs composed by the legendary team of John Kander and Fred Ebb and a book by Tony-winning playwright Terrence McNally, based on the1956 Friedrich Durrenmatt classic drama. Moreover, the beloved Chita Rivera, at 82, was starring as a rich and glamorous woman returning to her hometown to wreak revenge on the man and the impoverished town that had wronged her.So what went wrong? The musical had a long gestation period and had gone through four different incarnations: a 2001 world premiere at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago; a 2008 production at the Signature Theatre in Virginia; another at the Williamstown Theatre Festival last summer; and finally a Broadway bow in March of this year. The two early productions were directed by Frank Galati and the latter two by John Doyle.Doyle, who won a Tony Award for the revival of “Sweeney Todd,” would seem to be the right director to wrestle such dark and brooding material into shape. However, he is best known for his minimalism and with “The Visit” he cut much too close to the bone. He relentlessly pared down the production so that ultimately it became difficult to care for the stakes: A woman promises untold riches to the townspeople but only if they will kill the man who shamed her in their youth. Once the wager was laid — a third of the way into the 90-minute length of “The Visit” — there was little suspense as to how it would turn out and even less character development in the process.Perhaps, as often happens, the musical’s failure began when somebody said, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to turn ‘The Visit’ into a musical?” In this instance, the answer was no. But it does have an excellent score by Kander and Ebb that will live on in the original cast recording on Broadway Records, and it adds yet another illustrious performance to Rivera’s exceptional resume. Her Tony nomination for “The Visit” was her tenth.“Gigi” was a less worthy effort, although the creative team started with an even more impressive pedigree: A 1958 Oscar-winning movie with a melodic score by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. The question, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea…?” had been previously answered in the negative in 1973 with a Broadway flop for which Lerner himself had adapted the libretto. The temptation to try again proved irresistible to director Eric Schaeffer and the Kennedy Center, which commissioned a new book from screenwriter Heidi Thomas. She considerably softened the amoral aspects of the 1944 short story by Colette, which centered on the efforts of a grandmother and aunt to prepare a young girl to enter the family business as a high-society courtesan.Although the profession wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in the context of fin de siècle Paris, the creators of this revival considered it too risqué for its target audience: teens and young women intrigued by the romance and lured by the casting of Vanessa Hudgens of “High School Musical” fame in the title role. Thus “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” sung in the movie by the old roué played by Maurice Chevalier, was re-assigned to the grandmother and the aunt. That was just one of the mistakes in an ill-conceived production that appeared to leach out any hint of the Parisian sensuality at the core of Colette’s atmospheric tale.The creative team can lick their wounds with a couple of consolations. The show will have played 108 performances by the time it closes, three more than the 1973 production. And a 2016-2017 national tour is being planned. Perhaps the road will be more forgiving of some of the show’s flaws, and a revamp could also be in order.By the way, on the Tony Awards telecast, the company presented the number — “The Night They Invented Champagne” — with such over-caffeinated energy that some wags dubbed it “The Night They Invented Cocaine.”
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