Eye-watering electricity bill aside, it is a staging choice that wows at first, yet offers diminishing returns over the course of the three-hour show. Perhaps because of the demands of touring, since “Starmania” will be performed around France, Belgium and Switzerland over the next year, Emmanuelle Favre’s sets are fairly minimal. A rotating, towerlike structure is the most distinctive element, and effective when representing Naziland, the nightclub where Janvier awaits the election results.
Berger and Plamondon created an improbably rich world, and there was room to imagine just how Monopolis — a city of skyscrapers and underground tunnels — might feel. Yet even the Underground Café, whose waitress Marie-Jeanne acts as the story’s narrator, is a quasi-blank space.
The real star of “Starmania,” though, is the music. Not only does each of the eight lead roles have at least one vocally acrobatic solo turn, but most audience members still have the exact texture and phrasing of past performers in mind. In a nod to the 1970s cast, the well-known French singer France Gall appears in a hologram in one scene.
Gall’s silhouette drew applause, as did many of the songs — not when they ended, but as soon as the first words were heard. At least a dozen times over the course of the first night, the six-strong band and singers would start a number, only to be drowned out by cries of joy. Rather than a new production, “Starmania” often felt like a collective trip down memory lane, tapping into layers of emotion that have accumulated over decades.
The weight of expectations must be daunting, but the large cast of singers from France and Canada were brilliantly fearless. (Unforgivably, their names weren’t listed anywhere in the theater or on the production’s website.) David Latulippe avoided egregious villain mannerisms as Janvier, and had a superb match in Magali Goblet (known as Maag), who brings weary depth to the role of Stella Spotlight, a broken actress Janvier seeks out as his consort.
Stella gets some of the most virtuosic, heartbreaking numbers, starting with “The Farewell of a Sex Symbol,” which lays bare the mental health toll of being objectified as a young actress. The cult of celebrity, and its darker side, are the overarching theme of the plot. In the musical, “Starmania” is the name of a TV show that promises instant fame to a lucky few. Ziggy (Adrien Fruit), a record dealer, falls into that trap, abandoning his friend Marie-Jeanne to chase success with Janvier.
As Marie-Jeanne, Jolly and his team cast a nonbinary performer who uses male pronouns, Alex Montembault. He is the heart and soul of the show, with an understated simplicity that contrasts with showier personalities, like Manet-Miriam Baghdassarian, who brings darkly intimidating energy to the gender-fluid character of Sadia, a Black star described as a transvestite.
