Double helping of 42nd Street – first stop Theatre du Chatelet in Paris

While London readies itself for a March revival of 42nd Street, the musical that propelled Catherine Zeta-Jones to stardom in 1984, Paris gets in first with a seven-week English-language run of the same show at the Theatre du Chatelet from 17 November to 8 January.

Stephen Mear will be directing a Chatelet cast headed by Alexander Hanson as Julian Marsh, Ria Jones as Dorothy Brock, Dan Burton as Billy Lawlor and Monique Young in the Zeta-Jones role of Peggy Sawyer. Gareth Valentine is musical director.

The London show will be at the same Theatre Royal Drury Lane venue that hosted the original West End production for which Zeta-Jones leapt out of the chorus to fame when star and understudy suddenly became unavailable at the same time, mirroring the show’s own storyline.

>The Harry Warren-Al Dubin song-and-dance classic will not only be the Chatelet’s final musical for the best part of two years while the theatre undergoes a massive refurbishment, it also marks the end of Jean-Luc Choplin’s 12-year tenure as director-general.

Choplin, 65, brought Broadway to the boulevards in a series of hugely expensive productions but the biggest love affair he had was with the work of Stephen Sondheim.

In a city where the theatregoing public’s enthusiasm for Sondheim was largely limited to the film version of West Side Story, Choplin staged glossy productions of A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park With George, Into the Woods and, most recently, Passion.

Choplin refused to have them or other great American musicals like The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, The King and I, Singin’ in the Rain and Kiss Me, Kate translated. Instead, audiences saw them as they were meant to be seen and sung, but with French surtitles.

For a city where French-language versions of the big musicals had frequently flopped, it was quite a gamble but one that very largely paid off.

In 2010 A Little Night Music, starring Greta Scacchi and Leslie Caron, became the first Sondheim musical ever to play in Paris and Choplin has continued to educate French audience in the American’s work on an almost annual basis ever since.

But he went far beyond Sondheim. Thanks to his vision, the first-ever stage version of An American in Paris had a run-out at the 1,800-seater Chatelet before transferring to Broadway and picking up four Tonys. This show comes to London’s Dominion Theatre in March.

Whether the Chatelet’s new director-general will have a similar passion for the great American musicals is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, the city of Paris, which employs the 150 staff and subsidises the lavish productions, will keep everyone on the payroll until the 2019 reopening.

Jeremy Chapman

Readers may also be interested in:

Passion – Theatre du Chatelet, Paris – Review