REVIEW: Lempicka (Broadway)
Apparently, it’s Lem-peek-uh.
Thanks to Dr. Kosicky [co-sitch-key], my senior-year college Central & Eastern European History professor, I like to think I have a pretty good grasp on my pronunciation of Polish. By the logic of Tamara de Lempicka — the titular subject of a new memory musical opening this week on Broadway — being Polish, one could assume her name to be pronounced Wem-pitch-kuh. But we don’t always get what we want, as the new production shows.
With Lempicka, DC’s very own Broadway Baronness is back: Rachel Chavkin has once again staked her claim on Manhattan’s West 48th, joining prior Tony-winner Hadestown in that corner of the Theatre District. Opening in the tail-end of the most packed season—nay, single month — that Broadway has seen in ages, the show has its work cut out for it. It’s gotta be good, sure, but it’s gotta stand out. After a welcomed premier at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and a lukewarm West Coast run at La Jolla Playhouse, it’s finally here on the Rialto with an appetite for acclaim.
Book/Music
Carson Kreitzer and Matt Gould’s hollow score immediately tears up any suspension of disbelief you thought may exist, jump-starting the action with synthed-up Millennial Whoops and poppy drums before a single word is spoken. If anything, it’s consistent: nearly all of the songs rely on a bed of uninspiring lyricism of non-rhymes that only disrupt the cadence and repetition. So much repetition. So much repetition. Very few songs felt memorable to me, and those that did were only due to their more engaging visual elements, leaving me to feel like an iPad baby at a busy restaurant. Off the top of my head, the electric “Perfection”, alluding to Futurist painter Marinetti’s eventual embrace of fascism and “Stay”, Rafaela’s empowering take-me-or-leave-me Act II ballad, are rife with musical merit. “Woman Is”, the coming-out showstopper ending Act I, has been floated around as a Broadway classic in the making, but detached from its context I can’t see it happening. The context, which mind you, is an actually well-thought book that humanizes all of its characters in surprising ways, even down to Suzy, the Parisian comic relief bartender. I find that the most conflicting of it all: a musical that genuinely had me engaged until they had to sing. The plot covers Tamara’s life in a flashback from 1970s Los Angeles, where she lived out her final days, covering her aristocratic origins among the Polish gentry until the outbreak of the Second World War in Paris. Displaced by the Soviets in World War I, she flees to Paris with her husband Tadeusz and daughter and are forced to take up regular livelihoods. At least, not Tamara, anyway; she’s a woman, working is the last thing she should do, according to her long-jobless spouse. But when she rediscovers a buried passion for painting after crossing paths with the Futurist movement, the exposure to the underbellies of Paris (good and bad) push her on a fateful path of self-discovery. Unsurprisingly among a Parisian artist, this involves queerness; and what we receive is a tenderly-approached Sapphic story that subverts typical portrayals of bisexuality. Unlike recent shows I’ve seen, it genuinely feels like Tamara loves her suitors, and didn’t just hook up with the same sex in some pot-stirring capacity. The human body and all its varieties is her muse, coital and raw, and it is all constructed around context to her actual works that are showcased throughout the 2-and-a-half hour production. A historically fascinating Jewish queer woman artist is given an wonderfully accessible showcase for her groundbreaking art, and as an art deco architecture appreciator, it’s only right we get a painting retrospective on the east coast ASAP. Sadly most of what we see in the show is held privately these days — expressed solemnly in the finale — but I am personally hoping this revives interest in her career from a purely artistic standpoint. 6/10
Acting
Longtime Elphaba actress Eden Espinosa returns to Broadway as Tamara.
I didn’t get to see her though, she was ill for my performance; I’m sure she’s wonderful. The good news is, I got her standby, fellow once-Elphaba Mariand Torres, who is spectacular. (What are these casting directors doing? Someone like her should be leading regularly.) Torres encompasses the spring-chicken-osity nature of Tamara’s development with tender steps, fueling her leaps of faith with earth-shattering vocals and emotional prolixity. Amber Iman — Howard grad and Helen Hayes nominee for Man of La Mancha in 2015 — as Tamara’s muse, the prostitute Rafaela, is sensational, projecting her vulnerabilities and haunting her legacy in Tamara’s life with snide personality and volume. The ensemble itself is collectively radiant, especially in Marinetti (George Abud)’s horsepowered numbers about machines and order; and though I’m sad to say it Tony winner Beth Leavel is present effectively for one (1) 11-o-clock, which she pulls off but her presence feels needless given the Baroness’ lack of relevance otherwise. 10/10
Production
I bring with me the sullen news that Rachel Chavkin is in fact a human being, and not an otherwordly theatremaking appparatus disguised as one. The acclaimed director, whose groundbreaking work on Great Comet and Hadestown permanently altered my brain chemistry, has rendered Lempicka unfocused and busy. Awkward blocking hides actors behind projection panels (Peter Nigrini often using to showcase the art with its context), stage composition awkwardly bounces the eye around the space, and the angular aesthetic competes with Tamara’s actual vision, which included many curvilinear elements in addition to her cubist inspirations. Sometimes it clicks — Marinetti’s numbers work very well with Riccardo Hernandez’s ironclad rebar staging, for example — but most of the times it attempts to join Tamara’s colorful, strokeless, graded works with black sticks that jut around the stage and dim every scene they are involved in, no matter how bright the material tries to be. It shines when Bradley King’s neon zips around the set, though, emulating the stroke of a brush in jolts of excitement, and also when his hues flood the theatre in more demanding moments. Hair and costumes by Leah J. Loukas & Paloma Young respectively were colorful and shapely (even if Mariand’s costumes were not well-constructed, likely due to her only having performed with tech once before this), and combined with Kirk Cambridge-Del Pesche’s makeup created well-dolled ensemble that had plenty of detail to appreciate. 3/10
Viz
As part of its strengths in showcasing the life of Tamara, most of its marketing involves just entire artworks. Title cards outside of the Longacre are just some of her works, which spoke volumes and allowed me to appreciate her use of form and shape. This continues into the branding of the program, logo, and pre-show scrim, which is a cropped version of her face from her self portrait in a green bugatti. The second-act scrim is even better, showcasing the finished product from the events of the Act II finale. Several people around me were discussing how that painting, which I won’t spoil, shook the game up and how it influences art to this day. 8/10
Verdict
Lempicka isn’t another surefire hit from director Chavkin, but despite its technical shortcomings and stale score, it excitedly showcases a forgotten artist via commanding performances and gripping storytelling. 27/40
