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Lempicka at the Longacre Theatre, Part 1:

This is a longwinded recap of my experience seeing the show and what I remember from it, with commentary (only a first part for now covering Act 1, because this post was getting way too long):

The original plan for my trip was to see The Who’s Tommy on Friday, Lempicka on Saturday (tickets pre-purchased), and then had a time slot open on Sunday where I was thinking about seeing another. But after the show I went back to my hotel room, stewed a bit, and ended up buying another ticket for the next day. Then on the way home I plotted how soon I could come back again, knowing the production wasn’t doing well in grosses and closing could be imminent. And then a few weeks later I took a red-eye across the country for the second time in a month to see the last three performances. So it is fair to say I am Very Not Normal about this show and the post below reflects that.

It turned out that I first saw the Broadway production the weekend that Eden Espinosa was out sick, so at both of the initial shows I attended, Mariand Torres played Tamara. There were probably some fans who were disappointed that EE was out, but MT was very good in the role (especially vocally) and afterward I thought her take on Tamara was an interesting contrast to EE’s. In the Sunday 4/21 show, Ximone Rose played Rafaela, and I was also interested to see her version of Rafaela since she had played the role for the last two weeks in La Jolla but I had not seen her there. On that Sunday, at 1:30 the line to get into the theater for the 2 pm show had already turned the corner at Broadway, with no forward movement at all. Maybe 15 or 20 minutes later, I overheard someone who had walked from the direction of the box office saying that the two leads were out, which I assumed could only mean Eden Espinosa and Amber Iman. (It says something about the lopsidedness of the love triangle that this was the most reasonable assumption.)

Spoilers everywhere below the cut:

Walking in, the first thing the audience sees is an enormous backdrop of Autoportrait: Tamara in a Green Bugatti:

There is a bench and an easel on the stage, and to the right, a white arcing structure that was also present in La Jolla. Some of the musicians, including the conductor, were set up in the box seats on either side of the audience:

The overture starts with a nervous ticking beat that bursts into a propulsive electronic theme; the cast is revealed behind a transparent scrim, standing on the multilevel set and gazing steadily forward. This was one of my favorite moments in the show. It is not an overture that leisurely carries you through all of the themes and motifs, it’s just – here are the characters – here is the scenery – let’s GO. And then it’s only Tamara, sitting on the bench.

The show uses elderly Tamara de Lempicka reflecting on her life as the framing device (“Unseen”), though aside from the framing device the story is a mostly linear timeline.

From there, the story got off to a strange start for me. On the first viewing, it was very difficult to stop comparing and contrasting what I was seeing to what I remembered from the La Jolla production, and some of the material did not seem to pull me in as well as it had before, or just felt awkward. However, once Act 2 started that feeling pretty much disappeared, and on the second viewing I barely noticed. I wonder if something like this was what many of the critics experienced as well, except that they presumably only had time to see it once (as most of the audience would as well). So I think I understand some of the reviews, even if I disagree with them overall.

“Our Time” starts with a young Tamara and Tadeusz in St. Petersburg talking about their upcoming wedding. This song felt very, very expository, but it does a lot of work – it has to establish their personalities, situation, and relationship and then tears that world apart (or at least puts some serious cracks in it) by the end of the song. We see that Tamara is already so obsessed with painting that she is doing so on her wedding day, in her wedding dress (maybe a hint that she is comfortable with risk); we see that Tadeusz is very attached to his aristocratic inheritance and what he feels belongs to him (“this land, my family’s for centuries”) so that his support of the Tsar and later foray into Polish nationalism makes more sense. Another thing this song did reasonably effectively was to tell a story of Tamara and Tadeusz together as an actual couple who actually like each other, so that when Rafaela shows up later the first leg of the triangle has a little more solidity to it. Beth Leavel made her first appearance in this scene as Tamara’s mother and got entrance applause when she stepped in. When the song continues from the point of view of the Russian revolutionaries, the tone is much angrier and aggressively triumphant. After Tadeusz is hauled off to jail, Tamara bribes, cajoles, and finally offers her body to the revolutionary guards in order to free him. The last guard is played by George Abud, who will appear later as Marinetti.

Beth Leavel and George Abud both made brief appearances as seemingly minor characters from Tamara’s early life here, which I assume is intended to draw parallels to the roles their primary characters later play in Tamara’s life. Her mother (like the Baroness later) is the person who steadies her and keeps her moving forward on her path; the third guard is the person whose situational power pushes her into a terrible bargain and takes away her control. Marinetti ends up being her teacher and offers her a space she can control in terms of art, but also represents an artistic and ideological position that she is in an ongoing push-pull with throughout her life.

In some ways I preferred the La Jolla version of “Our Time” where the revolutionaries started out straightforwardly hopeful and over the course of the song moved to vengeful and threatening even as the language of the revolution remained the same. It reminded me of “At the End of the Day” from Les Misérables (incidentally, another show I can’t evaluate with objectivity) in depicting the setting and society, while the Broadway version was more narrative-driven and more focused on Tamara and Tadeusz, and the revolutionaries seemed more one-note and cartoonish. With the Broadway version I felt like I got a clearer and more concise understanding of the story at the expense of an interesting idea and a stronger emotional reaction to the song. Having this as the first plot-driving song also set a tone that didn’t quite work for me.

We follow the Lempickis on the night train to Paris surrounded by other refugees as they sing of “Starting Over” after their world has been upended – and only at the end do we get a little note of personal discord as Tadeusz wonders, “what did you do to get me out?” I really liked that bit – it is obvious foreshadowing (and continues in “Paris”) but is not signposted with neon lights, which is sometimes how “Our Time” felt. I liked this song much better than the La Jolla version, where Tadeusz started in on the repeated questioning during the train ride and ended up seeming like an annoyance. Here he’s going on about some of his anger and resentment at his situation, but he and Tamara also have some moments of togetherness that made them seem like a couple who are very much in it together. There is the specific moment I mentioned in an earlier post, where they desperately cling to each other as they sing, “oh, and we’re free, a long dark night with you by my side”; hearing it in the theater, it was a brief & perfect expression of harmony while they are otherwise struggling with anxiety, fear, and uncertainty.

In “Paris” (“the ugliest beautiful city I’ve ever seen,” observes Tamara), once again a lot of things happen. In short, Tamara encounters Paris and sings about three things: work, women, and pastries, in that order. (In a way this could be an “I Want” song.) The work: the Lempickis manage to find an apartment but need to pay for rent, food, etc. Tadeusz is not particularly receptive to the idea of getting a job and his rumination takes a dark turn as he considers how Tamara could have gotten him out of prison when his influential father couldn’t; she deflects the question and in an ensuing argument he raises a hand to strike her but stops himself just short. Tamara goes out to look for work but her aristocratic life has not exactly given her marketable skills: “I’m… a very charming hostess!” Response: “We need cleaners, overnight shift.” Someone hands her a bucket. Bucket in hand, she sings about all of the women on the street showing their skin, which she rationalizes as being normal in a warmer climate (sure, Tamara). Though more seriously, she is seeing in them a freedom that she herself doesn’t have yet, so maybe that makes this more of an “I Need” song. On that note, she also sings about pastries, because she is surrounded by bakeries in Paris and has never been so hungry. Here I believe is where she sees a street artist painting at his easel. In a couple of the shows Eden Espinosa pulled a very funny “yikes” face before walking up to him and unthinkingly insulting his painting. So she decides to take up painting again after seeing that there is demand for it (even for an artist whose use of perspective is all wrong – I mean if that dude can sell a painting, why shouldn’t she?).

Then we get a funny little mid-song interlude with the madeleines. Tamara takes three madeleines out of a bakery box and arranges them on a plate in order to paint a still life. “Three madeleines,” she sings, then goes on and on about their lovely buttery goodness, leans in slowly to take a long, deep whiff of said buttery goodness – then abruptly crams one into her mouth with Cookie Monster levels of om nom nom. It is evidently very satisfying. Suddenly she looks at her now-disturbed still life, shrugs, and carefully rearranges the two remaining madeleines. “Two madeleines,” she sings, describing the elegant dusting of powdered sugar… then pauses to take a slow, deliberate lick of said sugar – then stuffs another one in her mouth. Next: “One madeleine –“ GULP and we are left with one very happy Tamara kicking her feet on the couch in delight, and an empty plate. But still needing something to paint, with a mouthful of madeleine she calls for Kizette (now a little more grown up) to pose for her. Part of the fun was that Eden Espinosa was clearly not actually eating all of the madeleines, though I don’t know if that was for performance reasons or for comic effect or both.

While showing her work on the street she meets the warmly supportive Baron and the skeptical Baroness, and he gives her a recommendation for Marinetti’s class at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Later as she paints in the apartment, Tadeusz complains of the smell but Tamara dismisses it, saying they can’t afford a studio for her to paint in. Kizette agrees with her mother that oil paints smell good and Tamara seems pleased to have Kizette take her side, though when Kizette ropes her father into an impromptu dance Tamara looks on somewhat wistfully at his easy relationship with Kizette. When she finally sells a couple of her paintings (to the Baron), she starts to see a path and a future in this city where she now feels she belongs.

At this point there has been a whirlwind of setup so it is nice to settle down a bit for a late night at the art school. Marinetti drops in on Tamara and she gets a lesson on what a painting is (canvas, pigment, “Plan and Design,” among other things) and what it is not. The audience gets a glimpse at Tamara’s need for control. I really liked this scene a lot as a teaching scene, and as an introduction to both the artistic and musical themes that will get repeated later in the show. The way Tamara sings “…or a glittering sky…” as the music shifts from isolated notes punctuating Marinetti’s statements to flowing chords and strings, you really hear and feel that this new, big idea has finally clicked in her mind and she is opened up to a new way of thinking and a whole new reason to make art other than survival.

Rafaela makes her first appearance performing on the street (as indicated by a projected caption and a car prop) in “Don’t Bet Your Heart.” I didn’t care for the car; it’s a fitting symbol of the fast pace of technological progress and industry, but every car I’ve seen physically represented on a stage looks really static. I liked the song though – both Amber Iman and Ximone Rose did a great job, and of course Natalie Joy Johnson as Suzy Solidor is chaotic fun as she attempts to collect money from the audience in her uh, conquistador helmet (?). Here though was another example of neon-signposting: when Tamara shows up in the middle of the song, she runs in squarely in the center of the stage on the middle platform just behind the action, her jaw drops and suddenly everything is in slow motion for just a moment when she catches her first glimpse of Rafaela and asks, “Who - is - she?” It draws attention to an important point that the audience might have missed otherwise (because everyone is looking at Rafaela), but it still felt a little jarring that Tamara appears and takes so much focus, even if she quickly fades into the background again as she stares at Rafaela and gets jostled by the raucous crowd.

Everyone runs off at the sound of a police siren, but Tamara’s mind has been blown and she vows to herself “I Will Paint Her.” Mariand Torres killed on this song both nights, and on the second night her singing in the final lines gave me chills up and down my spine. Then in a later show I saw Eden Espinosa perform it and acted it with such depth of feeling that I thought, “wait… is this my favorite song in the show now?” even without the sheer vocal fireworks. (I feel extremely lucky to have been able to see both of them play Tamara.) In both cases it felt like there was a bit more emphasis on the whole “Tamara has totally fallen for Rafaela but doesn’t realize that’s what has happened” premise of the song, and the Broadway audience definitely got the humor where the La Jolla audience didn’t seem to; perhaps it was played straighter there, so to speak. There was a huge audience response to this song.

So now it is time for the first group art show that Tamara is a part of, and the verbal descriptions of her paintings are pretty funny, especially the one of Kizette (Tadeusz: “a demon child”; Marinetti: “strange little girl”; Suzy: “that little girl is PISSED!”). We get our first direct introduction to Suzy while she serves drinks to the art show guests and makes very, very broad double entendres. (If the Monocle show I briefly dropped in on at The Friki Tiki is an accurate indication, NJJ is playing a not-very-exaggerated version of herself.) Marinetti shows up and is his usual abrasive and cynical self, and when the Baroness questions him about the role of art in shaping society (for the worse) it starts a bit of an argument which is the lead-in to “Perfection.” Tadeusz wants to leave but when Marinetti says, “Beauty is an engine – beauty is power” you can see Tamara’s antennae going up and she waves Tadeusz off, saying she’ll be home soon.

Halfway through the song, Rafaela shows up and Tamara leaps to ask her to model, offering her a chance at immortality such that people in the future will ask,”Who - is - she?”

George Abud is such a fun presence in the show and “Perfection” is still (maybe?) my favorite song; it was as entertaining and alarming in person as it had been listening to the 2022 track on repeat for the past two years. However it was also here where the costumes and choreography were particularly confusing. Dance is not really my thing so there is probably a vocabulary of movement that I am not getting, but there were several dance moves that to me looked like weakly punching the air and making airplane arms while stepping to the beat, and I thought, “wait are they trying to represent machines? Like pistons and engines and actual airplanes?” I honestly do not understand what the intended effect was; I was not getting a story of speed or power or a glorious technological future from it but I am curious how others saw this. Costumes were a little distracting but I can talk myself into thinking that this is a world where the avant-garde is made visible and present everywhere and people just put on their costumes of daily life over it. (Though I do think it would have been easier to process the show overall if the ensemble costumes were a bit more period-representative.)

After all that, “Wake Up” sung by Tadeusz is a big contrast. Marinetti is at a point where he wants to wrest control of the future and turn it toward his purposes with an army of sleek backing dancers in corsets and leather bustiers, meanwhile Tadeusz is only just now dragging himself out of passivity and possibly depression to put on a very traditional three-piece suit and go apply for a job at a bank. I suppose one can’t expect that everyone’s going to be like Tamara, belting through adversity and charging forward on a path of artistic and emotional discovery. I do actually like this song because it tells me more about Tadeusz than I knew before and provides some character growth; the song helps give him an arc in the show where I don’t recall there was much of one before. In terms of pacing, it is breather after several high-energy songs in a row.

In an amusing montage, Tamara stalks the Dead Rat for days on end trying to find Rafaela, only for Suzy to break the news each time (in typically comic fashion) that Rafaela is not there. It turns out that the show’s conductor is also the piano player at the Dead Rat, because sometime before this scene, she moved out of the box seat and down to the stage. What I found neat was that the video monitor camera either went with her or switched views so that she could still conduct while on stage.

Tamara gives up pestering Suzy for a bit to go paint, with Kizette modeling. In “Mama Look at Me,” Kizette quietly begs her mother to actually see her, but as usual Tamara is absorbed in her work and keeps viewing her daughter in terms of the parts of the image she is creating. Giving up after one last “Mama…”, Kizette eventually changes tack and asks why Tamara has told people Kizette was born in Warsaw (rather than Petrograd). Tamara explains the microaggression toward Jews that drove her answer (a modern variant might be “where are you really from?”) and provides a capsule history of the independent Polish state complete with morphing background projections, which I found clunkily expository the first time I saw it but appreciated more in subsequent viewings since I am sadly not nerdy enough about European history. It also sets up some of the background of Tadeusz claiming his Polish identity, which will lead to conflict later. Tamara further explains her tactic of deflection where she deliberately makes people focus on the thing she wants them to see. (Come to think of it, the show itself has done this a few times.)

There is a fun scene transition where Rafaela shows up and Suzy calls out “she’s here!” from across the stage to Tamara while she’s still in the studio with Kizette, and Tamara being Tamara she promptly ditches her adoring, needy daughter to go meet Rafaela at the Dead Rat.

Tamara and Rafaela drink and converse and find common ground and gradually the conversation turns to more personal topics, as Tamara alludes to the story of the third guard. Seeing some kinship in Tamara’s vulnerability, Rafaela offers Tamara opium to help her relax, and asks the musicians for “Bracelet, in A.” As Rafaela sings “The Most Beautiful Bracelet” (basically directly to Tamara, even as she’s feeling up the other patrons of the bar), Tamara is staring back at her with naked longing.

(Note: I did miss the song “Stillness” from previous productions and the buildup it provided for the relationship between Tamara and Rafaela, but understand why it would be removed since it did kind of kill momentum. This version works even with the seduction happening sooner.)

After the song, Tamara is tongue-tied and loopy. In this state of confusion she again falls back on the language of art to express her attraction by professing a fascination with Rafaela’s lipstick color, which leads to a kiss, which leads to Tamara bringing Rafaela back to her studio where, to the sound of a sweeping romantic instrumental, they start removing their clothing (Tamara appears to be briefly awestruck when Rafaela is standing before her in only a slip) and climb into the bed with Tamara sitting atop Rafaela.

I must talk about this lighting effect now (but bear in mind I know exactly nothing about stage lighting). For most of the love scene it is dimly lit, evoking nighttime with some sort of limited external light such as street lights, or perhaps a full moon through a window. Onstage there is a row of smallish circular bluish-white lights running the length of the top of the stage which start out pointing downward toward the stage. As Tamara moves her body against Rafaela and slowly extends her arm upward in an expression of passion, the row of lights rotates upward to point toward the audience. As they rotate it appears they are getting brighter (or maybe it is just due to the lights shining more directly at the audience) and the light becomes blinding as Tamara reaches (a very strongly implied) orgasm. At the same time, the lighting below dims, the music diminishes, and Tamara, Rafaela, and everything on stage fade from visibility into a nearly opaque wall of cloudy blue. It was very cool to look at and I don’t think I am doing it justice with my description.

Later I was thinking about how that might work; when the audience comes in at the beginning of the show, I did notice this fog-effect going on at the top of the stage:

So I wonder if they can maybe crank that fog machine (or whatever) up and let the vapor diffuse throughout the stage area for this scene, then when the time comes they can hit the area with lights such the light scatters in a particular spectrum, or maybe they can just use colored filters, I don’t know. But then how do you ensure that the wall of haze is uniform and stays where it needs to be? Anyway, maybe a lighting designer has explained it somewhere on the internet.

It’s still nighttime, and Tamara wakes and exits the room to gather her thoughts, when unexpectedly a slightly drunk, apologetic Tadeusz shows up to give her flowers. Wracked with guilt over how she has betrayed their relationship, Tamara goes back into her studio intending to end the liaison right then. But when she sees the sleeping Rafaela illuminated by a gentle light, she forgets everything else as she launches into “Woman Is.” And who can blame her? There is a very cool visual sequence during the song when Tamara sings “I want to feel your soft lips, your sharp teeth” etc. and piece by piece the lighted edges of the set behind her start to come alive (partly visible in this video from Production Stage Manager Cody Renard Richard).

Finally the song ends, the curtain falls and when the lights go up we see the imposing image of “La Belle Rafaela” throughout intermission.

(Part 2 coming soon-ish)

#lempicka musical #lempicka

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