Theater review by Adam Feldman
Audiences have watched Sophia Anne Caruso grow up onstage, from the unnamed Girls of Lazarus and Blackbird to the creepy teens in Beetlejuice and The Grey House. She strides confidently into womanhood in Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen, a musical adapted from Moyoco Anno's racy manga about a Belle Époque Parisian sex worker who named Colette—a nod, surely, to the author of the courtesan chronicles Gigi and Chéri. An expat Japanese writer, Sakae (Marc delaCruz), hires Colette to keep a journal about the oddball patrons who come to get laid at the Night Egg, a mid-level brothel that caters to clients with unusual fetishes. Meanwhile, her abusive ne’er-do-well lover, Léon (Cory Jeacoma), squeezes her for money and dotes in secret on Nana (the commanding Nkeki Obi-Melekwe), a ritzier lady of the night.
Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen | Photograph: Courtesy Andy Henderson
Director-choreographer Rob Ashford mounts the show in the round, on a circular central platform with a bed that descends from the ceiling; designer Scott Pask surrounds the stage with retro-decadent cabaret atmospherics, and Catherine Zuber provides naughty costumes. These trappings evoke a Company XIV retro- burlesque extravaganza, and the cast cavorts skillfully. But musical theater does not lend itself easily to sexiness, and neither does the therapeutic lean of Leah Nanako Winkler’s book. “He’s a Foreign Legion soldier who lost all his friends at El-Moungar,” Colette explains of a client who likes to wear diapers and have gauze rubbed on his belly. “His grief manifests into emotional and physical holding.”
Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen | Photograph: Courtesy Andy Henderson
It is hard to judge Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen without acknowledging that its composer and lyricist, the indie singer-songwriter and Spring Awakening creator Duncan Sheik, died in September. His score includes effective moments of French-accented musical angst—très Sheik—and had he been able to give the show a final polish, he might have fixed its most wince-inducing passages. (“You’re a strange little runt,” sings Nana. “You must have a nice [rhymes with runt].”) But that wouldn’t solve the musical’s main problems: a heavy-handed reliance on the healing virtues of kink, and a main character who, despite Caruso’s vocal power and charisma, has limited claim on our interest, because she does little beyond taking notes on her chamber of whorers. “I’m like a psychotherapist with benefits,” Colette explains. Hot? Not. The story's fire is doused by alt-pop psychology.
Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen. The Culture Club (Off Broadway). Music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik. Book by Leah Nanako Winkler. Directed by Rob Ashford. With Sophia Anne Caruso, Marc delaCruz, Cory Jeacoma, Nkeki Obi-Melekwe, Jenny Powers, Elsa Keefe. Running time: 1hr 30mins. No intermission.
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Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen | Photograph: Courtesy Andy Henderson