The High School Musical star channels Audrey Hepburn in Gigi on Broadway.

 

BY ALEX BEGGS

 

It was a quick Band-Aid rip of a transition when Vanessa Hudgens went from the sweetheart in colorful headbands on the Disney Channel to the dangerous seductress in the neon bikini in Spring Breakers. Sure, there were some B-list horror movies in between, an incredibly consistent appearance at Coachella, and a brief leaked photo scandal—the usual. But now Hudgens is back to her High School Musical roots in Gigi, which opened this week on Broadway. The play, based on the novel by Colette, also stars Tony winner Victoria Clark, and Tony nominee Howard McGillin, and tells the story of a young woman being trained to become a courtesan in Paris at the turn of the century. Leslie Caron played Gigi in the stylish 1958 movie version, which then spurred the first, and brief, Broadway run in 1973. Four decades later, Gigi is giving it another go.

 

Eloise illustrator and the star of the new HBO documentary It’s Me, Hilary, artist Hilary Knight went to the final dress rehearsal of Gigi and sketched Hudgens in her beautiful costumes designed by Tony winner Catherine Zuber (Zuber is also behind the grand costumes in The King and I). Above, see Hudgens’s young Gigi high-fiving her older, wiser self in her glamorous, showstopping gown.