Theatre / Amélie

Though times are hard for dreamers, Amélie is someone to believe in.

Amélie is a musical based on the 2001 romantic comedy film of the same name with music by Daniel Messé, lyrics by Messé and Nathan Tysen and a book by Craig Lucas. The musical premiered at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in September 2015 and starred Samantha Barks in the title role and Adam Chanler-Berat as Nino. The musical then opened on Broadway in March 2017 starring Phillipa Soo as Amélie and closed on May 21, 2017.

A fully retransformed production was mounted in the West End in 2021 following a successful UK/Ireland tour and London run in 2019/2020. Featuring a completely re-orchestrated score and reinstated songs from out-of-town tryouts, the show starred Audrey Brisson as Amélie and Chris Jared as Nino. The production was nominated in 3 categories for the 2020 Olivier Awards, including Best New Musical; the cast recording was also nominated at the Grammy Awards for Best Musical Theatre Album in 2021.

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Tropes:

• 20% More Awesome: During a geometry lesson, Amandine states that "it is a statistical fact that 90% of children who don't listen to their mothers commit murder during adulthood".
• Aborted Arc: The Broadway production introduces Collignon's harsh treatment of Lucien in "Three Figs" but this is never addressed again.
• Accidental Passenger: Played with. Nino is late boarding his train and just barely gets on as the doors close, but realizes that he had left his beloved photo album behind. As it leaves the station, he yells that he needs to get off in order to retrieve it but to no avail.
• Actor-Muso Show: The 2019-2021 production that toured the UK and ran in Newbury and London used this approach. Amélie herself does not play any instrument until she actively chooses to in Act II, symbolizing a stronger reluctance to open up to others compared to the other characters.
• Adaptation Personality Change:
  • Phillipa Soo's portrayal in the Broadway production emphasized Amélie's role as The Pollyanna and The Ingenue, sometimes even verging into Womanchild territory, depicting her as a wildly optimistic and cheery young woman despite emotional baggage keeping her from connecting with others. Audrey Brisson's portrayal in the West End plays up the trickster aspect of the role more. Amélie is depicted as more neurotic, emotionally repressed, and mischievous while still retaining the character's moxie and charm.
  • Adam Chanler-Berat's portrayal of Nino on Broadway was typical of the rom-com love interest and was much more of the straight man to Amélie's Cloud Cuckoolander, often confused by her quirks and antics. In the West End, Chris Jared portrayed Nino more similar to Amélie as a quiet but passionate man with a more innate ability to understand her. The pair are more Birds of a Feather because of these differences.
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Dufayel asks Amélie if Nino was grateful to have his album back, she snaps back, heartbroken under the assumption that Nino gave up on her:
  Amélie: You know what the girl with the glass sees when she looks at you? She sees Renoir. Because that's who's painting her, not you. She's not looking at you, she's looking at Renoir, so mind your own business and go paint your own painting!
  • Dufayel fires back with an equally biting one:
    Dufayel: Well try living your own life instead of the lives of others!
• Berserk Button: Don't mention figs around Collignon.
• Birds of a Feather: Amélie and Nino are two quiet loners in Paris that tend to get lost in their own worlds. Both have a fascination with observing others from a distance: Amélie through a spyglass and Nino through discarded photos.
• Bilingual Bonus: As an adaptation of an iconic French movie, plenty of the language is peppered into the West End production. Characters often shout "merde" in frustration, which translates to "shit".
  • Amélie speaks French the most, partly due to Actor-Inspired Element, as it was Audrey Brisson's first language as a French-Canadian.
    Amélie (as narrator): "Les lignes six et quatorze venant de Bercy sont prevues a l’heure. Prochain arret: Gare de Lyon." Translates to: "Lines six and fourteen coming from Bercy are on time. Next stop: Gare de Lyon."
• Big "NO!": When Nino loses his photo album.
• Bigger Than Jesus: In "Goodbye, Amélie", an Elton John parody sings that Amelie is "nicer than Oprah, bigger than Jesus".
• Black Comedy: The handling of Amandine's death. The Broadway production has a dummy of the tourist fall on Amandine who drops dead from the impact.
  • The West End production has Amandine Killed Offscreen, but Amélie rattles off a rapid-fire narration of how fast the tourist falls before landing on her mother, ending in...
    Amélie: squish.
• Blatant Lies: Amélie tries to deny her identity when Nino comes to the 2 Windmills Cafe to meet her, even though he has a picture of her for comparison.
• Bookends: The West End production begins with Nino and Amélie exiting the photobooth separately and ends with them entering it together.
• Break the Cutie: Amélie is pushed more and more out of her comfort zone as the show progresses, culminating with "Stay", where she must confront her emotional baggage with Nino just outside her door. Afterwards, in the West End production, she briefly believes that Nino had given up and left due to her indecisiveness to let him inside. She breaks down and begins to sob.
• Call-and-Response Song: "Half Asleep" in the West End production depicts Amélie and Nino declaring their love for each other while on the train, not aware that the other is just a few feet away. Amélie begins with her verse and Nino responds with his.
• Career-Ending Injury: Suzanne's limp comes from an accident during her time as a trapeze artist. Her then-boyfriend had dropped her and with her circus career over, she decided to buy and run the 2 Windmills Cafe.
• Chekhov's Skill: Dufayel's arc involving his obsession and inability to fully recreate Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party" is resolved after "Stay", where he shows Amélie that he was finally able to paint an original work: a portrait of her. This gives her the resolve to let Nino inside so that they can begin a relationship.
• Color Blind Casting: Most of the characters in the film are caucasian, but throughout the show's history several people of color have played the roles. Amélie herself was originated on Broadway by an Asian American actress.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Amelie's costume is composed of bright reds and pinks in stark contrast to everyone else, which helps her stand out as the protagonist. This is more prevalent in the West End production and others going onward with everyone wearing costumes of either muted, neutral, or monochrome colors.
• Color Motif: Amélie's association with the color red is worked heavily into promotional material for the Broadway production, including the official Playbill of the show.
  • The green and yellow color scheme of the movie is featured prominently in the UK production, with the set comprising a green metro station with yellow lighting and promotional material using a similar palette.
• Comically Inappropriate Funeral Urn: After Amandine's funeral, Raphael decides to keep her ashes in a garden gnome. His reasoning for doing so is even more expemplary.
  Raphael: Your mama hated it. So I will always think of her when I see it.
• Comically Missing the Point: Dufayel tells Amélie that she needs to muster the courage to talk to Nino or else she's better off joining a convent. Her takeaway from this exchange is to disguise herself as a nun to return his book to him.
• Composite Character: Gina in the movie was simply Amélie's coworker that helped bring her and Nino together towards the end. In the musical, she is also given the characterization of rereading old love letters from her husband who died while eloping with his mistress. In the movie, this was a completely separate character that Amélie helped, the concierge of her block of flats.
• Compressed Adaptation: Because of the shift in medium (dealing with added songs and the restrictions of a stage), several aspects of the movie were condensed, removed, or reshuffled.
• Costume Evolution: Nino's costume changes in between the LA production and the final Broadway production, from a flannel and windbreaker to a tshirt and blazer.
  • Minor changes occurred with most of the costumes in the UK production between the tour, off-West End, and West End runs, specifically Nino, Gina, Suzanne, and Georgette.
• *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": Georgette sneezes a bit too hard and throws out her back in the process.
• Crash-Into Hello: Downplayed in the Broadway production; Amélie and Nino's first interaction occurs when she accidentally steps on his feet while he's on the ground looking under the photobooth.
  • Played straight in the West End production, where Nino and Amélie walk backwards and eventually run into each other.
• Crazy Consumption: In the West End, a customer flirts with Amélie at the 2 Windmills Cafe and gives her his number at the bottom of his receipt. She responds by eating it.
• Darker and Edgier: A mild example in terms of the 2017 Broadway production and the 2021 West End production. Not only is the UK production literally darker, with its dark green set contrasting the white one of Broadway, but the show is also much less saccharine. The humor is dryer, the characters are less perky and chipper, and the few sexual references/imagery are much less family-friendly.
• Death Wail: When Fluffy the goldfish tries to kill himself in "World's Best Friend" by jumping out of his bowl, young Amélie wails for the entirety of her parents' attempt to retrieve him.
• Demoted to Extra: Lucien and Collignon are introduced in "Three Figs" as if they will play a larger role in the story, but hardly appear afterwards besides occasionally as narrators.
  • One of the biggest changes between the Broadway and West End productions is Young Amélie's role. The former subverts this trope; she frequently appears in adult Amélie's imagination after she has grown and helps navigate life with her. In the latter, the role does away completely with an actress and is played by a puppet instead; the actress for Amélie speaks for her younger self and it is no longer used once she leaves home as an adult.
• Despair Event Horizon: Amélie runs back home after assuming Nino gave up on her for Gina, an utter waste of efforts on her part after it took a lot of courage to put herself out there. She decides to move away to start over and promises to further isolate herself from others, throwing away the progress she's made so far.
• Didn't Think This Through: Amélie tries to tell Nino her theory of who the Mysterious Man is but realizes it may not be completely sound.
  Amélie: I know the mysterious man in your album. He's a ghost, he's invisible. He's trying to prove he still exists.
  Nino: So he only appears after the film is developed? So who tears the photos?
  Amélie: (Beat) ...I hadn't thought of that.
• Distant Duet: Played with in "Half Asleep", where Amélie and Nino sing to themselves of their love for the other thinking they are alone on the train, when they're actually just a few feet apart.
• Double Meaning: "The Late Nino Quincampoix" refers to the fact that Nino is physically late for his meeting with Amélie and her Imagine Spot where she assumes it's because he (almost) died.
• Drunken Song: Implied in "Thin Air", where Nino scours for Amélie late at night by plastering flyers that feature her face in a mask asking "Have you seen this woman?".
  Nino: I may be hammered but I hear my heart pound and it's reaching out to you.
• Dual-Meaning Chorus: The final chorus of "Stay" has both Amélie and Nino singing "Stay where you are" and "Pin down your heart", but the two mean different things. Amélie tells him to stay put so she can run away without worrying about him following and to extinguish the feelings he has for her. On the other hand, Nino begs her to stay with him instead of running away and tells her to stop ignoring what her heart is telling her.
• Eleven O'Clock Number: "Stay" is the emotional climax of the show wherein Amélie is forced to face her problems; she can no longer run from Nino (and her feelings for him) as he waits outside of her door.
• Epileptic Trees: Invoked in-universe a few times.
  • By Nino in "When The Booth Goes Bright":
    Every photo of every face
    Is a time and place that you leave behind
    There's the girl you were
    There's your trip abroad
    There's your father's smile
    There's the face of God!
  • By Amélie after she retrieves Nino's photo album, which features a mysterious man whose photos Nino's collected many times:
    Dufayel: Maybe he's possessed with something and can only calm himself with this.
    Amélie: Maybe he's dead. Maybe he can't accept it. He goes from booth to booth to prove he's alive. He can't take it in.
  • When Nino is late to their arranged meeting at the Two Windmills Cafe, Amélie immediately jumps to the conclusion that it's because he was hit by a train. Not only that, but he ended up falling in love with his nurse and moved on from her.
• Establishing Character Moment: At the end of "The Flight of the Blue Fly", Amélie interrupts the song by shushing everyone and finishing the line, the first instance of many where she controls the environment around her.
  Company: Everyone's connected though they may not understand that falling feels like flying—
  Amélie: Shh! Til the moment that you land.
  • In the same song, Nino's first appearance is stepping out of the photobooth, an item highly associated with him throughout the show as he collects discarded photostrips. Amélie is also the only other character to be introduced in this way, establishing their roles as primary characters.
• Fangirl: The women of the cafe adore Lady Diana, though Amélie in particular feels a deep connection to her, stemming from a belief that they both try to make others happy despite deep feelings of inadequacy and loneliness. One of her motivations for returning Bretodeau's box is that by doing so, she'd be more like the princess.
• Foreshadowing: In "The Girl With The Glass", Amélie's guess about what the eponymous girl might be thinking hints to future events. Reuniting a dog with its owner refers to Amélie returning Bretodeau's box to him and "whispering that he's into him" hints to her secretly instigating a relationship between Joseph and Georgette.
• French Accordion: Naturally the first instrument you hear in the UK production.
• Funny Background Event: Raphael always wipes his hand after touching Amandine due to being a massive germaphobe.
• Goofy Print Underwear: The gnome wears Union Jack boxers in the musical.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: "World's Best Dad" (or "Papa" in the West End) shows the first instance of Amélie's heartbeat; her elevated heart rate due to love of her father leads her parents to believe that she has a heart defect and is therefore isolated from others. The leitmotif continues throughout her meetings with Nino, "Tour de France", and "Thin Air".
• Hidden Depths: Nino's hobby of collecting discarded photostrips isn't just a pastime; he views his growing collection as a piece of art, which is implied in the conversation he has with his coworker after losing it. This is confirmed in the character list on Concord Theatricals's website, which explicitly describes Nino as an artist.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: In the West End production, where Chris Jared (Nino) towers over Audrey Brisson (Amélie) due to her standing at 4'10''.
• Imagine Spot: Amelie imagines Elton John singing at her funeral, similar to how he did for Princess Diana.
  • In "The Late Nino Quincampoix", Amélie nervously wonders why Nino is late to their arranged meeting. She comes to the conclusion that while on the way he was hit by a train and moved on after falling in love with the nurse who cared for him.
  • Nino has one during "When The Booth Goes Bright", imagining the lives of a particular couple in a photo despite only knowing of them through said snapshot. It's ambiguous how many photos of the couple he actually has, but he recounts their courtship, engagement, marriage, separation, and the man's despair in a single verse.
• Immodest Orgasm: In the West End, Georgette and Joseph's hookup can be heard by everyone in the cafe.
• Incredibly Long Note: Played for laughs twice, first in "Goodbye, Amélie" by Elton John and in "There's No Place Like Gnome" by Raphael.
• I Taste Delicious: In the musical, the guy who accidentally kills Amélie's mother gets up and tastes some of the blood from his head injury while singing.
• Killed Offscreen: Invoked in the UK production; Amandine steps behind a confessional booth while the tourist jumps off of it, and the audience never sees the impact.
• Leitmotif:
  • In both major productions:
    • Amélie's heartbeat is first shown in "World's Best Dad/Papa" through a leitmotif and occurs throughout the rest of the show, most notably during her meetings with Nino.
    • Scenes involving Bretodeau and his box are also scored with melodies from "The Bottle Drops".
    • Events associated with the church also share one, with the same melody used in "World's Best Mom/Mama", "Sister's Pickle", and "Blue Arrow Suite".
  • In the Broadway production specifically:
    • Scenes involving Dufayel or Nino's album are scored with "The Girl With The Glass".
  • In the West End production:
    • Scenes that involve Nino's album or the Mysterious Man are scored with melodies from "The Flight Of The Blue Fly".
    • Amélie's theme comes from "Times Are Hard For Dreamers".
    • Nino's theme is taken from "When The Booth Goes Bright".
    • "World's Best Papa/Friend/Mama" all use the same melody in the verse and is used again in "The Girl With The Glass"".
• Lemony Narrator: Used aplenty in the West End production like its source material, but with ensemble members all taking part to deliver pieces of narration that have no relevance to the plot. Highlights include a German tourist getting stuck in his camping chair and Lucien going to great lengths to describe how Bretodeau likes to eat his roast chicken.
  Amélie: Meanwhile on a bench in Villette Square, Felix Lerbier learns that there are more links in his brain than atoms in the universe. Meanwhile at Sacré Coeur, the monks are practicing their backhands.
• Long List: In "A Better Haircut", Georgette rattles off a list of various diseases that are comparable to falling in love.
  Love is just another diagnosis
  Like chicken pox, swine flu,
  Streptococcus, walking pneumonia,
  Mumps, herpes, hepatitis,
  Syphilis, tetanus, human papillomavirus!
• Lyrical Dissonance: Invoked in the West End version of "When The Booth Goes Bright". The orchestrations are rousing and upbeat but the actual subject of the song and its lyrics are quite melancholy; surely there's no good reason to tear up a photo of yourself (that you paid for) and throw it away, but Nino is excited by the notion and this is evident through the score.
• MacGuffin: Bretodeau's box of childhood trinkets drives the plot of the first half of the show as Amélie tries to return it. Nino's lost photo album takes over in the second half.
• Matchmaker Failure: The end result for Georgette and Joseph, whose relationship Amélie covertly instigates.
• Meaningful Background Event: "The Late Nino Quincampoix" sees Amélie spiral out of control when she wonders why Nino is late to their meeting, concluding that he almost died from a train accident that led him to falling in love with his nurse. While lamenting falling for a boy who seemingly "doesn't know how to tell time", Nino's shadow can be seen behind the cafe doors getting ready to enter.
• Medium Awareness: In the Broadway production Amélie tries to steal her father's garden gnome but has a hard time pushing the display off the stage. She then has the realization to flick a switch that unlocks the moving mechanisms and manages to successfully leave with it.
  • In the West End, after Amélie uses the flying lamp to get to her flat, she shoos it away, telling it to retreat to the rafters where it is held when not in use.
• Mickey Mousing: The West End version of "Tour de France" has accompanying sound effects for the various things that Amélie describes to the Blind Beggar, namely an envelope opening, a cat, and a lightbulb burning out.
  • In the same production, "A Better Haircut" has Suzanne detail the origins of her limp: her now ex-boyfriend dropped her when they worked in the circus. During this section of the song, subtle circus music and the impact of the fall are provided by the accordion and piano.
• A Minor Kidroduction: Played straight in the Broadway production, with a child actress playing young Amélie for the first few scenes.
  • Played with in the UK production; the story still begins with a look at Amélie's childhood, but rather than being portrayed by a child actor, the featured actress for Amélie voices and acts alongside a puppet meant to portray her younger self.
• Moment Killer: Amélie's satisfaction from spray painting Hipolito's poetry around the city is cut short when she finds one of the flyers that Nino put up in search of her.
• Mundane Made Awesome: The West End production utilizes props and setpieces to their fullest extent, with many items taking on multiple uses. The central photobooth is also used for a confessional booth, phone booth, observation deck, front door, and more. The pianos open up to form storefronts and a flying lamp takes Amélie to her flat on a second level, which itself is housed in a massive clock.
  • Present within the show itself because the audience sees things through Amélie's highly-imaginative POV. An old box left over from the last tenants of her apartment could easily be dismissed as garbage but she likens the experience of finding it to Howard Carter's discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb.
  • A regular stroll through the city becomes an adventure for her and the Blind Beggar as she describes each sound for him.
  • Likewise with Nino, who views torn up photographs not as trash, but as windows into their subjects' souls. He's even stunned to finally meet the man whose photos he's repeatedly collected, even though he's simply the photobooth repairman.
• Mushroom Samba: Played with in the West End production via Amélie's revenge on Collignon. He's not actually drugged but he is given a fig tart that he believes is apple and it causes him to hallucinate a terrible nightmare.
• Mythology Gag: The last names of several characters are never mentioned in the show, but are given in the character breakdown on Concord Theatricals's website. Hipolito's last name is Jeunet, a nod to the film's director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
• Nice Guy: The Cafe ladies question Nino of his intentions with Amélie, interrogating him to make sure he's not like the jerkass men they've dated in the past. However, he genuinely cares for her, trying more than once to get past them to make sure she's okay in the bathroom. He understands and admits that the unconventional means by which they were brought together doesn't ensure that his feelings are reciprocated (the fact that she can't seem to stay around him doesn't help his case either) but he's willing to try because of his love for her.
• No Social Skills: A given for Amélie, since she was isolated from other kids at a young age. With no clue on how to approach a man she likes, her plan of action is to cryptically send him clues on who she is and how to retrieve a prized item he lost.
  • There are hints of this with Nino as well, who believes an appropriate way to flag down strangers is to chase after them yelling "COME BAAAACK", which happens on two separate occasions.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: The Broadway production makes no attempts at all to replicate French accents, most likely for the better.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Happens frequently in the West End production, with the actors flipping between putting on French accents and speaking in their natural British ones.
• Rewritten Pop Version: The Broadway production's version of "Times Are Hard For Dreamers" has a corresponding pop version.
• Skewed Priorities: Played with in regards to Nino's hobby of collecting discarded photos. There's hardly a good reason for tearing up and throwing away a photo of yourself that you paid for, yet Nino has a strange fascination with these. This doesn't necessarily reflect a lack of empathy on his part (i.e. getting excited over people's implied struggles), but rather an unconventional way of observing others retroactively. He doesn't find joy in the actual people/things depicted (such as "the loneliness when she disappears" or "the face that you still remember though no longer know"), moreso the idea of getting to know someone so closely through only a snapshot and following their stories.
• Stylistic Suck: Some of Hipolito's poetry.
  Hipolito: The night was.
  Suzanne: The night was what?
  Hipolito: That's all I got.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Amélie hides from Nino yet again after they arranged to formally meet at the 2 Windmills Cafe, Nino decides to give up and go home.
  • Happens again immediately after when she comes out of hiding and assumes that he had left her for Gina.
• Spanner in the Works: Nino becomes this when he decides to put up flyers of Amélie's face (taken from a masked photo she had sent him) in search of her. Judging from her reaction to finding one, she hadn't considered an alternative to playing her little game and panics.
• Suddenly Speaking: Amelie's goldfish sings goodbye to her in "World's Best Friend" and the garden gnome gets his own song in "There's No Place Like Gnome".
• Tenor Boy: Adam Chanler-Berat as Nino on Broadway has a high and bright voice, suitable for an earnest, lovestruck man on a mission to find an elusive woman playing games with him.
• Through His Stomach: Attempted after Amélie runs and hides from Nino yet again when he shows up at the Two Windmills Cafe. Distraught, Nino tells everyone he's leaving, to which Suzanne offers a free meal in order to get him to stay. It doesn't work.
• Trail Of Breadcrumbs: Made into a prominent motif in the West End production with the reinstitution of "The Flight of the Blue Fly", which features the following lyrics:
  Everyone's connected though they may not know it's true
  They form a trail of breadcrumbs
  But what are they leading to?
  • Upon finding Nino's forgotten photo album Amélie refers to it as such, something that will inevitably lead her to him. She goes on to liken it to her game that guides Nino around Sacre Coeur with blue arrows.
• Uncommon Time: "Stay" alternates between measures of 6/4 and 5/4, giving a sense of uneasiness as Amélie is forced to confront her emotional baggage with Nino right outside her door.
• Verbal Backspace: Invoked by Amélie in "Sister's Pickle".
  Now I have to go
  I'm not finished with the boy—I MEAN THE BOOK
  So I will hold him—hold it—til tomorrow...
• Voiceover Letter: In the Broadway production, Adrien Wells gives his voice to his "final" letter when it ends up in Gina's hands in "Window Seat".
• Wardrobe Flaw of Characterization: A close look at Nino's costume in the West End reveals that his cardigan sleeves are well worn with small tears and holes in the cuffs, perhaps implying a lack of attention to detail, since his mind is always on something else like his photostrip obsession or Amélie. It also adds another hint to his status as a Starving Artist, on top of added dialogue implying that no one else seems to take interest in his work.
• Wham Shot: In the middle of secretly bringing happiness to Hipolito, Amélie comes across one of Nino's many flyers with her masked face on it, with the header "Have You Seen This Woman?". She immediately drops everything and exits the stage, invoking a Rapid-Fire "No!" and a Big "NO!" as an enormous wrench has been thrown in the gears of her plan.

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