A woman bursts through the door, a storm cloud of frustration wrapped in a potter’s apron. Her inability to neatly sum up her legacy — like Matisse or Picasso easily could, using a surname as shorthand — explains the rotten mood.
What follows is not exactly a portrait of the artist: “In Clay,” a tenacious and captivating solo musical about a forgotten French ceramicist, is passionately focused on the artist’s process. Its disinterest in a final product doesn’t make the jazzy 100-minute show feel unfinished, but rather like a meditation on the restless dilemma of thwarted promise.
The theme is fitting for this new musical receiving a nimble and punchy American premiere at Signature Theatre from director Kimberly Senior, following several modest productions in London. When the narrator reflects back on her time as student eager to make a bold and lasting impression, it’s easy to imagine that Rebecca Simmonds (who wrote the book and lyrics) and Jack Miles (who co-wrote the lyrics and composed the music) are drawing from personal experience.
Their achievement is both practical and reparative. The musical with a cast of one — plus an onstage quartet, led here by music director Matt Herbert — was conceived during the pandemic, with lean overhead in mind.
And by imagining the creative life of Marie-Berthe Cazin (whose public profile until now has been confined to a Wikipedia stub), the creators join a chorus of responses to the trick question posed by art historian Linda Nochlin in her 1971 essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Obviously, the answer is more complicated than, “Because of men, duh!” But it’s never not because of them, either.
Even before the nepo baby she marries starts stealing credit for her work, Marie makes for a slippery subject. Played with tremendous verve and gusto by Alex Finke, the artisan ricochets around her quaint and cluttered studio (the intricate scenic design is by Tony Cisek) telling the audience how she came to be a ball of intensity splattered with clay.
At first, the pottery metaphor seems a bit too apt. As she relays her formative relationships with artists of somewhat greater renown — including her teacher Jean-Charles Cazin and her childhood bestie, painter Henrietta Tirman — Marie is like a lump of clay herself, taking shape through the influence of others.
Slipping among characters with ease, Finke is never less than ferociously committed. Through a wry and brooding French accent, she argues as though before a court where Cazin’s legitimacy is on trial. As Marie comes of age in the studio, Finke’s brow is an elastic canvas for surprise and delight. At the same time, she lends Marie’s creative impulse the emotional velocity of Édith Piaf on a speeding train.
Marie may not know how to become a viable woman artist, but she has the irrepressible spark to sing out while trying. (If anything, Finke’s performance would benefit from greater modulation, the assurance to underplay rather than overstate extreme feeling.)
What the score lacks in variety it makes up for with a seductive and transporting style known as jazz manouche — the sort of piano-led, string-accented melodies you might imagine riding the breeze outside a Parisian cafe. The lyrics are both evocative and narratively dense, telling Marie’s story with a poet’s knack for capturing emotion.
True to Cazin’s chosen form, her character takes on a more distinct shape as she is forged by time and experience. It’s as though “In Clay” spins like a potter’s wheel, kneading and contouring its subject with the limitations faced by women artists until she emerges as one of unique disposition.
Of all the forces at work on Marie, capitalism apparently isn’t one of them. The moral of the story — that an artist ought to be defined by learning from her mistakes rather than commercial success — will be music to many ears, even if it seems hopelessly ideal. But what else is making a musical about art for?
In Clay, through Feb. 1 at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia. Around 100 minutes without an intermission. sigtheatre.org.
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