GINA!

GINA is an exceptionally rich, exceptionally bored Australian expat who spends her days mincing around the glittering, gilded streets of South Kensington buying extravagant gifts for all of her fake friends who constantly take advantage of her good nature, extravagant generosity, and bottomless desire to please. She sort of gets that she’s become a one-dimensional caricature of a crazy rich lady, but she doesn’t much care, nor would she even know how to live something other than the glancing, glittering, superficial existence that she was swept up in all those years ago by her distant, dismissive, gaslighting, and otherwise spectacularly shitty husband, MAX. And even though she’s a fundamentally kind and well-meaning person, she’s also someone who seems to arouse intense disdain in nearly everyone she meets, for no particular reason at all. “She’s tacky, she’s nosy, and I can’t bloody stand her!” her oldest, closest friends, HELEN and CYNTHIA and LAURELLE might typically mutter to each other in between complaining about their champagne-induced urinary tract infections after a fabulously long lunch of kiss-kiss, mwah-mwah, clink-clink that Gina, of course, paid for — with pleasure!

But when Max is drops dead (the bastard!), Gina unexpectedly finds herself a widow — and a VERY wealthy one at that. With this newfound freedom, she finally — finally! — has the chance to live life on her own terms and figure out who she really is...not to mention a few billion pounds to help fund the endeavour. Fabulous! And what does she want to do with all that cash? Why, stage a lavish, West End musical retelling of her rags-to-riches life story: Gina! The Musical. Exclamation Mark! You see, before Gina met Max, she was Broadway-bound, baby. But Max resented her talent and hated all the attention that she got on stage, so he gave her a diamond-encrusted ultimatum, and that was that. And what about the music in this musical, you may well be asking? Well, Gina’s got a plan for that too: baby, it’s a jukebox musical featuring the songs of Australia’s greatest pop stars!!! It’s a gift to her countrymen, when you really stop and think about it. Just divine! 

Unsure of how to embark upon such a monumental undertaking, or where to even start, Gina turns to the only two people she’s ever truly been able to trust: her beloved twenty-something son Christos aka CHIP — a painfully gorgeous simpleton whose beauty and wealth ensures that he’ll always only fail upwards (in the best way possible); Chip’s best friend SISSY — a wayward but charming aristocrat quite literally living off of her family’s good name (and bad credit); and Gina’s her two fabulous but deeply eccentric older sisters TAMS and TABS who left their life in Sydney behind to be there for their baby sister in her time of need. 

Together, over the course of six incredibly costly months, Gina, Chip, Sissy, Tams and Tabs embark upon the titanic undertaking of pulling together Gina’s harrowing pull-yourself-up-by-your-Hermès bootstraps life story. With the help of veteran West End producer CASSANDRA, the eponymous-but-no-one-know-one-knows-why wunderkind theatre director JOJO, the deeply delightful, deeply unqualified choreographer MINAS, the deeply brooding and achingly French musical director MATTHIEU, hairstylist to the stars (not to mention Rose Byrne’s brother) BEAU BYRNE, power stylist LORENZO FROM PRADA, and Chip’s lover-du-jour, power twink pop star TROYE SIVAN, Gina might just stand a shot in hell at pulling off the spectacle that has been dancing around in her head since before she could walk.

And of course there’s JANE BURTON, Gina’s staid and emotionally constipated (which is to say, British) therapist, and DR. TEDDI, Gina’s tyrannically cheerful (which is to say American) dermatologist, and STEPHAN, Max’s slippery slimy lawyer who’s perennially up to no good…and PETER…Gina’s exceedingly mild-mannered, exceedingly long-suffering accountant. Poor Peter keeps “strenuously advising against” such expenditures, but guess who listens to Peter? That would be precisely no-one.

Do any of them have any real experience in mounting a West End musical? Certainly not. But it turns out that there’s a certain level of wealth that obliterates any practical impediments to success, including the need for expertise or even basic competency. Renting out Royal Albert Hall for six months? Pocket change! Purchasing AC/DC and Kylie Minogue’s entire back catalogues so that you can open your vanity musical with a “Thunderstruck” and “Loco-Motion” megamix? A mere rounding error! Paying dozens of SINGERS, DANCERS, STYLISTS, MAKEUP ARTISTS,  SOUND ENGINEERS, SET DESIGNERS, LIGHTING DESIGNERS, a one hundred-person ORCHESTRA, and three deeply indignant MAESTROs to just hang around while you finish writing the libretto? Sans importance!

It’s all going swimmingly…that is until LEDA, Gina’s longtime housekeeper and, uh, Max’s longer-time live-in mistress (it’s a very modern arrangement) learns that she’s not going to get a single penny from the estate and loses her goddamned mind. Determined to claim what she feels is her rightful inheritance, Leda sets about destroying Gina…and Gina! The Musical in the process. With the assistance of her loyal team of  supermodel minions who she not-so-affectionally terms her SWANS, and the all-too-eager help of those backstabbing bitches Alex, Daphne, Stassi and Laurelle, Leda schemes to drive Gina and Gina! to ruin. And she damn near succeeds!

But you can’t keep a woman like Gina down! Undaunted by the dastardly machinations of her supposed nearest and dearest, Gina steamrolls ahead, unwittingly vanquishing her would-be tormentors one-by-one with her strange but utterly unique combination of gumption, obliviousness, dumb luck, and — dare we say it? — irrepressible charm. 

So all’s well that ends well, and opening night is a glittering, dazzling, star-studded, talk-of-the-town spectacular that brings together friends, foes, and noted Australian NICOLE KIDMAN, all of whom have only one thing to say: 

“Gina: that was really…something.”