Lempicka
Opening Night: April 14, 2024
Theater: Longacre Theatre
Website: lempickamusical.com
Spanning decades of political and personal turmoil and told through a thrilling, pop-infused score, Lempicka boldly explores the contradictions of a world in crisis, a woman ahead of her era, and an artist whose time has finally come.
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April 14, 2024
But if there’s no denying the realness of the vocal power, and the sleekness of Rachel Chavkin’s staging on deconstructed Art Deco sets by Riccardo Hernández, the story (by Kreitzer and Gould) too often feels incredible in the wrong sense of the word.
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April 15, 2024
Ultimately, they scrape together a delicious, delirious portrait of this largely unknown juggernaut.
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April 14, 2024
The musical no doubt will further enhance the artist’s prominence, which had waned over the decades. But even as it works to cast Lempicka in a new light, this complex artist still remains just beyond the frame.
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April 14, 2024
And that, to less pleasing effect, is the feeling one gets from the messy new musical Lempicka, a portrait of the artist that tries to cram her into too small a frame, without the benefit of strong composition.
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April 14, 2024
Though the musical’s book and lyrics remain doggedly by-the-numbers, Chavkin’s direction (and a good cast that includes Andrew Samonsky, Amber Iman, George Abud, Beth Leavel and Natalie Joy Johnson) keeps Lempicka barreling through the last century’s wartime horrors, peacetime optimism and an art that grew from both.
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April 14, 2024
In the end, “Lempicka” takes a potentially fascinating character and turns her into another weepy, boring victim.
READ THE REVIEWApril 14, 2024
Frankly, the show would have been far better if it had simply evoked a savvy and brilliant artist in this richest of European eras. Shoving de Lempicka so aggressively through today’s ideological and aesthetic filters, unconscious as the act may be, has the effect of nullifying her singular ambivalence and complexity.
READ THE REVIEWApril 14, 2024
It’s fitting that the musical named for her wages a similar battle as it unfolds at the Longacre Theatre. An uneven, exposition-heavy book by Carson Kreitzer and Matt Gould, and an industrial set by Riccardo Fernandez, are the show’s more mechanical elements. But superb lighting design by Bradley King, an eclectic and electric score, and captivating performances are the pulsating flesh and blood that ultimately render Lempicka’s flaws like stray paint specks on canvas: keeping the work from “perfection,” maybe, but not ruining it. Ultimately, Lempicka is ravishing — and one of the best new musicals this season.
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April 14, 2024
Lempicka is an undeniably compelling and original piece of art, unique within a season dominated by musicals based on existing films or musical catalogs. It will be deeply meaningful to those who will find resonance in its various thematic threads, from the struggles of artists and the desire for a legacy, to the precarity of queer people.
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April 14, 2024
What “Lempicka,” the mystifying new musical about Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka, needs more than anything else is turpentine.
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April 15, 2024
Messy and maddening, new musical Lempicka has all the pedigree for something groundbreaking but never finds its own distinctive form.
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