Vanessa Hudgens, who made her name as Gabriella Montez in the Disney Channel’s “High School Musical,” is to play the title role in a new staging of Lerner and Loewe’s classic musical “Gigi” that’s intended for Broadway, a spokesman for the production announced on Wednesday.
The musical will first run at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington from Jan. 16 to Feb. 12. Its Broadway dates and theater have not been announced; the spokesman would say only that it would open in 2015.
The production will add a new chapter to the show’s already complicated history. An adaptation of the Colette novella ran on Broadway in 1951, starring Audrey Hepburn, in her first major role, as Gigi, whose relatives try unsuccessfully to prepare her for life as a courtesan. Seven years later, Lerner and Loewe reconfigured the material, fitting it out with songs like “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” “I Remember It Well” and “The Night They Invented Champagne,” for Vincente Minnelli’s film musical, which won nine Academy Awards, including best picture. That movie was the basis of the 1973 Broadway musical, for which Lerner and Loewe composed a few new songs, and which won a Tony for best score.
For the 2015 version, which will be directed by Eric Schaeffer (“Follies,” “Million Dollar Quartet”), the British playwright and screenwriter Heidi Thomas (“Call the Midwife”) has created what she is calling a “re-envisioned adaptation” that will include songs from the film that were dropped from the stage version, including “The Parisians” and “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight,” as well as several that were added in that production.
In a statement, Ms. Hudgens, who is 25, said she had started performing in musicals at a very young age. (Since “High School Musical” and its sequels, she’s released several CDs and starred alongside James Franco in “Spring Breakers.”) “It has always been my dream to be on Broadway,” she said. “I cannot wait to get back onstage, singing and dancing these songs and living in Gigi’s glamorous world.”