FROM TWEE TO TRÈS MAGNIFIQUE

It’s fascinating how some stories lend themselves better to one medium than the other. In 2001, the French romantic comedy, Amélie was an unexpected worldwide hit and briefly made an international star of its beguiling lead, Audrey Tatou. I’d watched it on release (in the theatre, natch) and thought it charming and sweet but also incredibly twee. Fifteen years later, a musical adaptation appeared on the West Coast, moved to Broadway to middling reviews, was substantially reworked for the West End in 2019, and now almost a quarter of a century (gulp!) after Ms. Tatou beamed at me in extreme close up at the Landmark Century Theatre, there I was trying to recollect plot details before Amélie, with a book by Craig Lucas, music by Daniel Messé, and lyrics by Messé and Nathan Tysen, kicked off the 2025 season of Kokandy Productions at the Chopin Theatre, in Chicago’s Wicker Park.

Aurora Penepacker with the cast

Aurora Penepacker, Melanie Vitaterna, Lucas Burrand, Quinn Rigg

The entire basement space is utilized for the production. Chairs, bistro tables, couches are arranged around a small performance area with two large doors at the back. Furniture and musical instruments move in and out according to the needs of the scene. Washing hangs on clotheslines above the audience, shutters are suspended in the air. The furniture is quaint and brightly colored. G “Max” Maxin IV’s set and light design depicts not so much a French bistro but our idea of what a French bistro ought to look like. It’s highly apropos for the fanciful silliness that will follow.

Todd Aulwurm, Aurora Penepacker, and the cast

Amélie Poulain is a quiet but extraordinarily self-possessed young woman with an active imagination living an uneventful life in Montmartre, France, but as her routine begins to stultify, she decides to give her life purpose by performing little acts of kindness to those around her. In keeping with the tradition of this sort of tale, the people around her are an assortment of types: eccentrics, lovelorn, heartbroken, artists, and dreamers. As she moves through their lives, she meets a strange man who collects discarded photos from photo booths at train stations and starts to question the role of love in the universe and whether there is any room for it in hers.

When you come right down to it this is really a French version of Jane Austen’s Emma, and I’m alright with that.

Sonia Goldberg and Todd Aulwurm

The production utilizes the book and song list from the 2019 West End production as well as its actor-muso approach. Director and Choreographer Derek Van Barham conducts his terrific cast with aplomb, keeping things moving at a lively pace. A bit too lively at times: the opening is a bit rushed and given the intermingling of players carrying instruments and spectators, the proceedings frequently teeter dangerously close to chaos, occasionally veering into it, but no matter.

Aurora Penepacker and Kelan M. Smith

Music directors T.J. Anderson and Anna Wegener are also in fine form. The actors are (thankfully) fine musicians and the orchestrations thread the needle, managing to be playful, raucous, and sentimental without tipping over into mawkishness or bombast. One wishes the songs were more memorable though: the melodies, while pretty enough, are forgotten almost immediately after they conclude, but no matter.

Even with Carrie Hardin as dialect coach, the French accents are, hilariously, all over the place, but no matter.

(front to back) Joe Giovannetti, Melanie Vitaterna, Lucas Burr,
Quinn Rigg, Mizha Lee Overn, Samantha Ringor and Sam Hook

None of these issues matter because of the cast. The exuberance and talent of the performers overwhelm any and all flaws in the book, score, and production. The total commitment from the cast to the absurdities of plot and character is what makes this work. And leading them in a star-making turn as Amélie Poulain is Aurora Penepacker (aside: how awesome is that a name for an actor?). In a wig and bright red skirt, she pouts, beams, sulks, and plots her way into our hearts (with considerable help from her gorgeous voice). I wish she were more successful at locating the loneliness behind Amélie’s machinations, but one can’t have everything, I suppose. Her stage presence and gamine charms take no prisoners.

(front) Joe Giovannetti with (back) Jon Patrick Penick, Lucas Burr and Kelan M. Smith

I had no such issues with Joe Giovannetti as Nino, Amélie’s love interest. He so fully inhabits his character that I had trouble identifying him out of context in the playbill. His performance is an idealized microcosm of Amélie: quirky, silly, romantic, lonely, and yearning, in equal measure and his singing is shaded with the same complexity. Penepacker’s Amélie may be the star of this production but Giovannetti’s Nino is its beating heart.

Samantha Ringor, Mizha Lee Overn and Sonia Goldberg

The supporting cast is uniformly excellent but I must single out Jon Patrick Penick’s stellar work as Julien Dufayel and Collignon: effortlessly switching between soft-spoken nuance and broad farce, his performance here is remarkable. His Dufayel, in particular, is just wonderful.

Jon Patrick Penick and Aurora Penepacker with the cast

Amélie works so much better as a musical than it did as a film. The material is perfectly suited to a medium where repressed people break out into song to express themselves, where garden gnomes travel the world, and men with bones of glass paint their lives away. The preciousness of the film is eschewed for pure enchantment and loveliness. This is a soufflé of a show. Light, airy, and delicious. And about as substantial.

Joe Giovannetti and Aurora Penepacker

photos by Michael Brosilow

Amélie
Kokandy Productions
The Chopin Studio Theatre, 1543 W. Division St.
Thurs-Sat at 7; Sun at 5
ends on September 28, 2025 EXTENDED to October 19, 2025
for tickets ($15-$55), visit Kokandy

for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago