“Zank ’eaven for leetel girls, zey are so very ooh-la-la, I swallow zem with my foie gras.” OK, the song that opens Lerner and Loewe’s musical about the petite verticale who is being trained to become agrande horizontale doesn’t go quite like that, and Gigi itself is only subtextually a paedophile show, but something about the way Topol offered flowers to a tot, singing that Parisienne nymphettes “grow more delightful every day”, made me very uneasy.

Topol? Yes, the actor who deservedly won international fame as the dairyman in Fiddler on the Roof, here plays Honoré, the elderly roué who agrees that his nephew might find little Gigi amusing for a few months. But Topol’s attempts to match Maurice Chevalier, who took the role in the film, aren’t so successful. He trundles about the Regent’s Park stage in his awful mauve jacket, leering at the ladies, rumbling out lines like, “My dear child, you are safe in my hands, but I can’t vouch for the rest of me”, half-visibly winking at the audience, and exuding what he presumably thinks is Gallic charm but is actually a grisly winsomeness.

If this musical brings out my inner Legion of Decency, it may be partly my fault. After all, it’s based on one of Colette’s less cynical novellas and even has a nice, comfy Hollywood dénouement. Gigi’s granny and great-aunt, meaning Millicent Martin’s kindly Mamita and Linda Thorson’s commanding Alicia, may want their protégée to follow the family tradition, which is (Alicia’s words) not to get married at once but maybe to “get married at last”. But Lisa O’Hare’s Gigi has the self-respect to resist becoming the plaything of Thomas Borchert’s Gaston; and Gaston has the respect and love for her that transforms him from glammy lover into prospective husband.

Lerner and Loewe saw Gigi as a thematically similar follow-up to their My Fair Lady, and it has some good hums to offer, among them The Night They Invented Champagne and that undeniably witty exchange of clashing romantic memories, I Remember it Well. But it’s not quite as sophisticated as its creators thought. Myself, I tired both of their knowing tributes to the gay Paree, whose epicentre is Maxim’s, and of the ladies and gents who endlessly patrol the stage in their Belle Epoque costumes, adding period prettiness to Timothy Sheader’s slick revival.

Still, Thorson makes a fine monster in her magenta dress, snapping out lines such as (of Gigi): “She’s gone from puberty to senility without a stop on the way.” And O’Hare is sweetly demure after her Gigi has hit adulthood. However, her earlier attempts to play the bouncing gamine in a tomboy suit seemed forced. To adapt from The Sound of Music, she’s 15 going on 25. Given the subject matter, maybe that’s no bad thing.

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