The Art Deco artist named Tamara de Lempicka headlines a new show that’s at its best when she’s off the stage
If ever a big Broadway musical featured a show-stopping number set in a lesbian bar, I missed it. Kissing and hugging women, plus a few crossdressing men, finally take the spotlight in the new musical “Lempicka,” which opened Sunday at the Longacre Theatre.
I didn’t have to wait quite so long to see a musical number set in a gay bar. For me, that momentous moment came in the 1970 musical “Applause,” based on the movie “All About Eve,” in which Margo Channing (in the person of Lauren Bacall) holds court at one.
Followers of Sappho, welcome to the world of musical theater! It’s only 2024.
Even better than the lesbian bar song, very generically titled “Women,” is a duet that comes later in “Lempicka.” The Polish Art Deco painter who calls herself Tamara de Lempica (Eden Espinosa) has a husband (Andrew Samonsky) whom she loves, and she prostituted herself in order to get him out of some prison in Russia during the 1917 revolution. The couple flees to Paris, where Tamara, now the toast of the art world there, takes a female lover (Amber Iman), who quickly becomes her muse. When the husband and the girlfriend finally meet, it seems right that there should be fireworks.
Instead, the composer-lyricist Carson Kreitzer and lyricist Matt Gould give the pair a very civilized song to sing, and the more measured Iman and Samonsky become in their confrontation, the more the song “What She Sees” drips with irony, comeuppance and contempt. It’s a great book song because it’s not only tuneful but filled with action and character.
