American musicals can handle flying vampires or murderous barbers, but unless Bob Fosse was involved, they tend to struggle with sex. At best it’s either expressed metaphorically or suggested through evocative, erotic song and dance, and one musical that famously pulled this off was the original production of Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s “Spring Awakening.” (That show is getting a new Off Broadway revival next month.)
The new musical by Sheik — who tragically died a week before previews started — does not land nearly as elegantly, or hotly. Set in a Parisian brothel in the early 20th century, “Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen” starts off with an awkward whimper rather than a sexy sigh as a madame coos in a mangled mix of French and English: “Entrez-vous a maison close, let’s relive your little trauma.”
Try that at karaoke night.
Perhaps the cringe-worthy therapy-speak could be overlooked by focusing on the action. But the director and choreographer Rob Ashford has staged the scene with a slo-mo tableau of women in revealing underwear writhing in feigned abandon and mock-caressing one another and their johns. It’s all rather “Max After Dark,” if you can recall the risqué cable franchise that peaked in 1990s. At least Scott Pask’s immersive in-the-round set for the Night Egg at the Culture Club, taking over part of the old “Sleep No More” space, is gorgeous enough to provide distraction with its tarnished mirrors and heavy red drapes.
Leah Nanako Winkler’s book is based on a manga by Moyoco Anno, whose artwork lines the hallway leading into the venue; and like it, the show is narrated by the gamine Colette. Portrayed with an appealing, cool distance by Sophia Anne Caruso, Colette introduces the audience to her Night Egg colleagues as well as to those who frequent the not-quite-best little whorehouse in France, overseen by Madame (Jenny Powers).
One of those visitors, the Japanese failed novelist Sakae (Marc delaCruz), gives Colette a notebook and suggests she jot down her experiences. True to her namesake, the French writer Colette, our heroine translates her life into autofiction.
Despite its title, the musical is driven not so much by the relationships between the women and the clients, or even among the women themselves, but Colette’s coming into her own as a writer. It is no coincidence that Sheik wrote the show’s most emotionally potent songs for that character. Too bad they all follow the same format of keening ballads that lean on Caruso’s wail-belt; the actress’s ability to evoke steely resolve and subterranean idiosyncrasies are left largely untapped.
Toward the end of the show comes a reference to Madame sending insubordinate employees to the basement. But other than that, Colette presents the Night Egg as a happy cocoon of a workplace, where the clients are on the young side, buff and handsome and seemingly well-behaved. (Viewers will get a much bleaker description of a cathouse from roughly the same era in the new Netflix series “East of Eden.”)
Colette’s biggest problem is her boyfriend, Léon (Cory Jeacoma), whom everybody but her know is a mooch and a miscreant. He happily takes her money and cheats on her with the courtesan Nana — likely an allusion to one of the 19th century’s most famous literary prostitutes and portrayed here with regal seductiveness by Nkeki Obi-Melekwe.
Still, “Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen” is not just the story of a young woman’s artistic and sentimental education. It takes place in an environment built on sex work, so the show must engage with that reality. A line in Anno’s manga posits that “real perverts are people with desires you can’t name.” That sense of mystery is absent from a production that is not sure what to do with the human libido (or class frictions for that matter). The opening number may be titled “Your Perversion Is Our Pleasure,” but both are absent from a pasteurized production that expurgates eroticism and kink — elements that are very much present, albeit subtly, in Anno’s manga.
A note in the script gives a partial explanation: “Each man’s desire should be played as a deep psychological need and every seduction as an act of therapy.” Pop-psych buzzwords might not be the best way to indicate how to musicalize and dramatize lust. A tantalizing morsel of what might have been is Colette and Léon’s duet “Sometimes in the Evening,” which has the slow-burn sexiness of an old Lee Hazlewood-Nancy Sinatra collaboration.
Unfortunately what we usually get here are weaving bodies and juvenile kitsch — it’s hard not to snicker when Léon sings “I’m gaga for Nana / She’s the ultimate mama.” Talk about a vibe killer.
Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen Through Jan. 3 at the Night Egg at the Culture Club, Manhattan; memoirsmusical.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
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