This is one of those shows that's frustrating precisely because you can see the parts of it that are really great, and how they're muffled by the parts that aren't.
First off, I loved the score, even if the melody is often let down by pedestrian lyrics. These are just fun songs to listen to - Don't Bet Your Heart, Perfection, The Most Beautiful Bracelet, Pari Will Always Be Pari, Women, Stay, What She Sees, and Just This Way are all going to get heavy spotify rotation from me. There's so much bounce and creativity in every single song, and the whole score feels surprisingly unified in how it sits on the border of 20s jazz and pop-fascism, while still being purely theatrical.
Also, Amber Iman absolutely dominates the stage every second she's on it and I'll be there for whatever she does after this. The way she handles all those smoky jazz runs and ornaments, stretching the notes without breaking the melody or veering into raspiness is just amazing.
The plotting is hit or miss but I really dug how they tied the connection between futurism and fascism to Lempicka's desire for control and power. Of all the plot threads, this was the most successful and the one I wish they'd laser-focused on, because it's just so darn interesting. Marinetti is fun, catty, and viscious, and I loved how they leveraged the power he has over the audience against what he represents and becomes.
The futurism-fascism thing is also something I wasn't very familiar with, and I think they do a great job of investigating that here, and I really REALLY love it when a musical can dive into something so specific like that. The score made me feel the impact of futurism, and how that would be totally bewitching following the calamity of the first great war. It's a perfect example of how to use the medium to communicate something abstract like that.
Unfortuantely, the love triangle totally stumbles. I think there are two reasons for this. One is simply that Tadeusz is a terrible character. He's boring and stupid and when I realized he was about to get a front-of-the-curtain solo in the first act I couldn't help laughing because...why? Who is this man? His numbers aren't bad at all, but there's so little to the character itself that they just fall flat, which is a shame because What She Sees is such a great idea for a song.
The other reason is that there's just no time to expand on it, mostly because the show takes forever getting going. First there's the park bench number, then the wedding dress scene, then that painfully long Russian Revolution sequence, and then the even longer Paris sequence (three madelines...two madelines...one madeline...). It takes like thirty minutes for things to start actually happening for real, and, to be honest, the revolution and the Paris sequence both have some of the show's worst music. Our Time (can we stop with this? nobody can top sondheim's setting of those two words) and City Of Light are bland, meandering numbers that wildly overstay their welcome and absolutely pale next to the rest of the score.
Along with the script issues is the staging. The big unit set is nifty-looking, especially when it lights up with the racing LED strips, but it a: hems the action in to a little triangle downstage and b: leaves a huge amount of distracting empty space that never gets filled. This issue is compounded by the small size of the chorus/dancer cast. It looks goofy when they're all clumped together downstage with this huge empty set looming over them, like a failed flash mob, and it looks goofy when they're scattered around the set in ones and twos, like half the dancers got stuck in an elevator on the way to the show.
It doesn't help that most of the choreo is underbaked and often distracting, and a lot of it looks like the dancers were told to just do whatever. I couldn't take my eyes off the two on the upper platform during the first Paris sequence who were just kind of wiggling around aimlessly. Tighter movements with clearer intent would've done a lot to help, because that looseness hobbles the energy of the score. Don't Bet Your Heart is one of the most electrifying songs I've heard in the theatre in a minute but why is it staged like a talent-show version of Greased Lightnin'?
There are so many moments in this show that knocked me over and I love to see that kind of reach onstage - the ambition is wild and when it lands it's so, so thrilling! But the fact that they've been working on it for a decade tells me (much like with Harmony) that they don't know how to tell their story, or even what their story is, but it's like they're afraid of going too far in any one direction, so they get muddled in the middle.
If they do go back to the drawing board, I hope they find a way to hone in on the connection between Lempicka's craving for security at all costs with the futurism-fascism connection. Every time those two things merged the show came to life, and focusing on those two things would do a lot to bolster the show. They need to embrace Lempicka's monsterhood in the second act, because the potential tragedy of it is so potent and so unexplored. The seduction of futurism and fascism being overruled ten minutes too late by the plaintive desire for human connection in Just This Way could be an all-timer climax in a better version of this show, but as it is it's kind of like hearing the distorted echo of beautiful music across the valley. Maybe the most beautiful musical is the one that doesn't quite work.
Also, if they do continue working on this, can we have a bitchy duet between Suzy and Marinetti? Please please please? It'll never happen because this show is probably just going to go crawl off and die in a corner, which makes me sad, but my gay little heart can dream.
edit: oh my god I didn’t realize this would be so long SORRY
Updated On: 4/30/24 at 02:06 PM
.jpg?format=auto&width=365)
