“Historical past’s a b—-,” says Tamara, performed by Eden Espinosa within the new musical “Lempicka.” “However so am I.”
The creators of “Lempicka” — ebook, lyrics and idea by Carson Kreitzer, music by Matt Gould — need their title character to be many issues: feminist, sexual revolutionary, trailblazing entrepreneur, tortured artist, sufferer and survivor, and martyr to the passing fads of artwork and historical past. There’s sufficient proof within the lifetime of the true Lempicka to justify most of these claims to a point, however this musical needs to show all of them, completely, within the house of two and a half hours. The result’s a breathless, up-tempo drive march via a number of the darkest many years in European historical past, and an enormous, messy, fascinating life is processed right into a theater piece that’s simply huge and messy.
The musical, first seen on the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2018, is framed as flashback: an previous and embittered artist alone on a park bench in Los Angeles in 1975, ruminating on her life and profession, questioning, “How did I wind up right here?” Her work is forgotten and out-of-fashion, and she or he is exiled in a world removed from the wit and class with which she as soon as surrounded herself.
Instantly it’s 1916, she is younger once more, about to be married, and her mom implores her to surrender portray and reside a correct, respectable life. Revolution intervenes and we’re off, on a freeway constructed by “Hamilton,” careening to the primary of the key traumas. After she fails to win her husband Tadeusz’s freedom by providing her jewellery to the menacing Bolsheviks, she is compelled to yield her physique.
The younger couple flee west, their flight traced on a map above the stage (scenic design by Riccardo Hernández), which can even bear fragments of the luminous, sensual, barely chilly artwork deco work of the true Lempicka, whose work has been collected and promoted by Madonna. An interesting ensemble of dancers (choreography by Raja Feather Kelly), by turns androgynous, louche, menacing and camp, set the tone for a frenetic idyll of ambition, success and debauchery through the interwar years in Paris.
Lempicka’s artwork is represented onstage primarily with empty easels and vacant image frames, and historical past will get the identical remedy: current as shadow, not substance. The revolution that disrupts the lives of our principal characters is merciless, however the precise grievance that sparks it’s handed over flippantly. A long time of need, distress and political violence scroll by, seen in black-and-white movie clips. If you wish to be taught extra about that, and the way it intersected with artwork, go see the Museum of Modern Art’s Käthe Kollwitz present, an artist a technology older than Lempicka, who left a far higher legacy.
In “Lempicka,” historical past is, as they are saying, only one dance quantity after one other. It summons the shocks and jolts that forge the identification and resiliency of the artist, which doesn’t yield an precise character, however extra of a ready-made hero for modern political tastes. Espinosa does heroic work tying the threads collectively, however as an alternative of inhabiting a personality with a number of sides, she’s left to reconcile a number of characters serving numerous theatrical functions.
Lempicka has an affair with Rafaela, a self-reliant prostitute (magnificently performed and sung by Amber Iman), and her work — portraits of assured girls and statuesque nudes — is well known as liberating by the LGBT habitués of the Monocle nightclub, which feels rather a lot just like the Package Kat Membership of “Cabaret.”
She additionally wrests vital independence from Tadeusz, performed with starchy magnificence by Andrew Samonsky, however when she tells him a horrible secret, the scene falls flat as a result of their relationship has by no means been coherent. She goes her personal means, resisting the grim, modernist ideology of the futurist prophet, Marinetti, depicted as an obnoxious drunkard and brutal social seer by George Abud. But it surely’s unclear if we should always admire the artist for her independence, or her pragmatic, even cynical submission to elite style. The present appears to credit score her not simply with embodying the New Girl splendid of the Nineteen Twenties, however with inventing it. “Your girls,” says a ghostly apparition of Rafaela, “they’re taking on the world.”
Director Rachel Chavkin’s manufacturing is trendy and fast-paced, and opens up simply sufficient room for a number of real theatrical moments. Iman’s “The Most Stunning Bracelet” is an Act I showstopper, as is the spotlight of the night, Beth Leavel’s tender, decided but resigned track about love and reminiscence in Act II during which she performs an aristocratic girl dealing with as much as her personal demise.
Gould’s music lacks a powerful melodic profile, and tends to maneuver rapidly to the massive, fortissimo notes that flatter his singer’s voices. However the textual content setting is evident and efficient and the music appears to vanish when the drama — Leavel’s heartbreaking acknowledgment of mortality — is the important factor.
The actual Lempicka is having a second proper now. Her work is on view at an exhibition at Sotheby’s, and will likely be given museum remedy later this yr at a retrospective in San Francisco. She is just not as effectively often known as she deserves to be, however she was not fairly as forgotten and forlorn as this musical claims she was. Her profession sputtered after she emigrated to the US and later Mexico. But it surely was already being rediscovered within the Sixties, topic of a significant retrospective in Paris in 1972, and has been cropping up in Madonna’s movies and spectacles for many years.
In a evaluate, revealed within the late Nineteen Eighties within the Girl’s Artwork Journal, a barely dyspeptic critic argued Lempicka’s artwork was extra rejected than forgotten: “Her Artwork Deco portraiture is basically unknown immediately for 2 good causes: it’s hopelessly outdated, and none of it was excellent to start with.”
“Lempicka” challenges each these assumptions. Audiences could also be impressed by the present to hunt out the artwork itself, which affords a extra measured and affordable riposte.
Lempicka, at Longacre Theatre, 220 W. forty eighth St., in New York. 150 minutes, together with intermission. lempickamusical.com.
