‘An American in Paris’ Theater review

The arrival of two big musicals derived from classic 1950s movies located in the City of Light (see “Gigi”) indicates either a resurgent interest in the early film oeuvre of Leslie Caron or a lack of producer imagination. Or maybe it’s just random, unintentionally reflected in the patchwork—if also lavish and classy—quality of “An American in Paris.” There’s much gorgeous ballet to admire in director-choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s Broadway debut, set against attractive, painterly backdrops by Bob Crowley, but the overall effect is of a dance concert with a semiserious musical squeezed into the cracks. Book writer Craig Lucas takes the bones of Alan Jay Lerner’s 1951 screenplay, which sent the great Gene Kelly leaping through postwar Paris after Caron to the hooting, swooning strains of George Gershwin, and concocts a story tinged by Nazi-occupation guilt and soldiers with PTSD.