Lempicka (Play)

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    ‘Lempicka’ to End Broadway Run a Month After Opening

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    The first show to fall in the wake of the Tony nominations on Tuesday, this musical about an art world individualist was years in the making.“Lempicka,” a new musical about an artistically and sexually adventurous painter, announced Thursday evening that it would close on May 19, just a month after opening.This is the first show to fall after this year’s Tony nominations were announced on Tuesday. “Lempicka” scored three nods — for the actresses Eden Espinosa and Amber Iman, as well as for scenic design — but was shut out of the best musical category. It really needed a boost, because its grosses have been anemic — last week it grossed $288,102, which is unsustainably low for a Broadway musical.The musical, which has been in development for years, had productions at the Williamstown Theater Festival and the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego before arriving on Broadway during a crush of openings this spring; it began previews March 19 and opened April 14.The show, which explores the life of the 20th-century painter Tamara de Lempicka, was written by Carson Kreitzer and Matt Gould and directed by Rachel Chavkin. Reviews were mixed to negative.The show, produced by Seaview and Jenny Niederhoffer, was capitalized for up to $19.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That money will be lost. In a statement, the producers said, “We are so proud of our production and the family of artists and artisans who’ve shaped it. Few knew better than Tamara de Lempicka that art isn’t easy but always worth the effort.”Broadway is packed with shows right now — there are 35 running, 12 of which opened in the nine days before the April 25 deadline to qualify for the Tony Awards. They are facing significant challenges, because production costs have risen and attendance has fallen since the pandemic. Many industry leaders believe that most of the new musicals will not succeed financially. More

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      Three Former Elphabas in ‘Wicked’ Scored Tony Nominations

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      The Green Girls are making good.Three women who have starred on Broadway as Elphaba in “Wicked” picked up Tony nominations on Tuesday.Shoshana Bean, who inhabited the role for a year starting in 2005, was nominated as best featured actress for “Hell’s Kitchen,” in which she plays a tough-minded single mother trying to protect her adolescent daughter from the temptations of the street. (This is her second Tony nomination — she was also nominated in 2022 for “Mr. Saturday Night.”)Eden Espinosa, who succeeded Bean as Elphaba in 2006, was nominated as best leading actress for playing an artistically and sexually adventurous painter in “Lempicka.”And Lindsay Mendez, who became Elphaba in 2013, scored a nomination as best featured actress for portraying a hard-drinking novelist in this season’s hit revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.” (Mendez already has one Tony, for her portrayal of Carrie Pipperidge in a 2018 revival of “Carousel.”)Who is Elphaba? Well, “Wicked,” a musical based on a novel by Gregory Maguire, is an imagined back story for the Wicked Witch of the West, and Elphaba is that character. (Reconsidering her actual wickedness is the subject of the musical.) Her name is derived from the phonetic initials of L. Frank Baum, who wrote “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”; her skin is green as a nod to the green makeup worn by Margaret Hamilton in “The Wizard of Oz,” the much-loved film adaptation of Baum’s novel.“Wicked” has been running successfully for so long, with so many companies, and with juicy leading roles for two young women, that it now appears on the résumés of many musical theater performers.The actress playing Elphaba needs a big belt; her iconic song is “Defying Gravity.” The role was originated on Broadway in 2003 by Idina Menzel, who won a Tony for her work, and who is expected to return to Broadway sometime in the not-too-distant future with “Redwood,” a new musical about a woman and, well, trees. (The musical had a production earlier this year at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.)The other main character in “Wicked” is Glinda (traditionally described as a good witch, although again, your mileage may vary); that role calls for a high soprano and was originated by Kristin Chenoweth, who is also hoping to return soon to Broadway — she is starring in a new musical called “The Queen of Versailles,” adapted from the film, that will have an initial production at the Emerson Colonial in Boston this summer. (A 2023 Glinda, McKenzie Kurtz, is currently starring in another new Broadway musical, “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” while Katie Rose Clarke, who had three separate tenures as Glinda on Broadway, is featured in this season’s revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.”)Meanwhile, “Wicked” is heading for the big screen, with Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda. The first of the film’s two parts is scheduled to be released in November, as a Thanksgiving weekend movie. More

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      Review: It’s No Sunday in the Park With ‘Lempicka’

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      A musical about the groundbreaking Art Deco painter is vocally thrilling but historically a blur.Having dismissed her work as merely decorative, a fierce Italian gives harsh advice to an ambitious young painter: “You need to be a monster,” he brays. “Or a machine.”The painter, Tamara de Lempicka, didn’t take the advice in real life because it was never given. But “Lempicka,” the new Broadway musical about her, which opened on Sunday at the Longacre Theater, certainly did, and then some. It’s a monster and a machine.A machine because it argues, with streamlined efficiency, that in her groundbreaking portraits of the 1920s and ’30s, Lempicka forever changed the representation of women in art, and thus changed women themselves. The volumetric flesh, aerodynamic curves and warhead breasts that so titillated Jazz Age Paris became, the show suggests, today’s template for glamazonian feminism.As for “monster,” well, efficiency is not always pretty. Among the values compromised in the grinding of the musical’s gears are subtlety, complexity and historical precision. Yes, that fierce Italian existed; he was Filippo Marinetti, the founder of Futurism, and later a fascist. But the scene in which Lempicka studies art with him is, like many others, made up.Does that matter in a musical that admits it is “inspired” by life, not faithful to it? Are there perhaps greater values than truth in play?Natalie Joy Johnson, left, as Suzy Solidor and Iman as Rafaela in “Lempicka,” directed by Rachel Chavkin.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Madonna and Barbra Are Fans. Broadway, Meet Lempicka.

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      A new musical aims to restore the reputation, in life and art, of the ambitious yet undervalued painter Tamara de Lempicka.The playwright Carson Kreitzer specializes in difficult women, disparaged women, women who should be better known. But 14 years ago, when a friend suggested the painter Tamara de Lempicka as a potential subject, Kreitzer wasn’t initially enthusiastic. The name meant nothing to her.Then in a used bookstore, a cover with Lempicka’s name caught her eye. Flipping through the monograph, image after glossy image, Kreitzer realized that she already knew Lempicka’s brash, gleaming work. She had seen it reproduced in Madonna videos and in Van Cleef & Arpels ads. There in that bookstore she felt compelled to write something as big, bold and richly colored as the paintings.“Tamara made me a musical writer,” Kreitzer, who had never written a musical before, said in a recent phone interview. “She demanded it.”After years of development, “Lempicka,” a biomusical by Kreitzer (book and lyrics) and Matt Gould (book and music), opens on April 14 at Broadway’s Longacre Theater. It is a work of recuperation, aiming to restore the reputation, in life and art, of a queer woman and an ambitious painter, who has often been undervalued, in the art market and beyond.“She wanted everything,” Rachel Chavkin, the musical’s director, said of her heroine. “She wanted more from life and ultimately life lost interest in her.”When it comes to reclaiming Lempicka, the musical is not alone. A concurrent selling exhibition at Sotheby’s, “The World of Tamara: A Celebration of Lempicka and Art Deco,” features several of Lempicka’s paintings, including “L’Éclat,” a portrait of a woman, her hair coiled like strips of film, and “Nu aux Buildings,” a sensuous nude backed by skyscrapers. This fall, San Francisco’s de Young museum will host the artist’s first major museum retrospective in the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Know About This Crazily Crowded Broadway Spring Season

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      Why are 18 shows opening in March and April, and which one is for you? Our theater reporter has answers.Is Broadway facing a bonanza or a blood bath?The next two months are jam-packed with new productions — 18 are scheduled to open in March and April — while the industry is still struggling to adapt to the new, and more challenging, realities of a postpandemic theater era.For potential ticket buyers, there will be a dizzying array of options. In early April, about 38 shows should be running on Broadway (the exact number depends on unexpected closings or openings between now and then).“From a consumer point of view, we’re excited about the amount of choice there is on Broadway,” said Deeksha Gaur, the executive director of TDF, the nonprofit that runs the discount TKTS booths. Anticipating that bewildered tourists will need help figuring out what shows to see, TDF is already dispatching red-jacketed staffers to preview performances and updating a sprawling cheat sheet as the employees brace for questions on what the new shows are about and who is in them.But the density of late-season openings — 11 plays and musicals over a nine-day stretch in late April — has producers and investors worried about how those shows will find enough ticket buyers to survive.“On the one hand, how incredible that our industry perseveres, and that there is so much new work on Broadway,” said Rachel Sussman, one of the lead producers of “Suffs,” a musical about women’s suffrage that is opening in mid-April.“On the other hand,” Sussman added, “we’re still recovering from the pandemic, and audiences are not back in full force, so there is industrywide anxiety about whether we have the audience to sustain all of these shows. It’s one of those things that only time will tell.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Broadway’s Crunchtime Is Also Its Best Life

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      Eighteen openings in two months will drive everyone crazy. But maybe there should be even more.Broadway is the pinnacle of the commercial theater, a billion-dollar cultural enterprise and a jewel of New York City. So why is it run like a Christmas tree farm?I don’t mean that it invites too much tinsel. I mean that it operates at a very low hum for 10 months of the year and then goes into a two-month frenzy of product dumping.This year, 18 shows, more than half of the season’s entire output, will open on Broadway in March and April — 12 in just the last two weeks before the Tony Awards cutoff on April 25. Like the film industry in December, angling for Oscars before its end-of-year deadline, theater producers bet on the short memory of voters (and a burst of free publicity on the Tonys telecast) to hoist their shows into summer and beyond.From a business standpoint, this is obviously unwise. Instead of maintaining a drumbeat of openings throughout the year — as Hollywood, with hundreds of releases, can do despite its December splurge — Broadway, with only 30 to 40 openings in a typical season, keeps choosing to deplete the airspace, exhaust the critics and confuse the audiences with its brief, sudden, springtime overdrive.Of course, I shouldn’t care about the business standpoint; I’m one of those soon-to-be-exhausted critics. Please pity me having to see a lot of shows from good seats for free.But regardless of the as-yet-unjudgeable merits of the work, I find myself enthusiastic about the glut. I might even argue for more.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Lempicka,’ New Musical About Art Deco Artist, to Open on Broadway

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      Rachel Chavkin of “Hadestown” will direct the show, which had developmental productions in Massachusetts and California.“Lempicka,” a new musical about the painter Tamara de Lempicka, will open on Broadway next spring after a decade in development.The show will join a Broadway season crowded with new musicals — at least a dozen are expected — at a time when the industry is facing smaller audiences, and higher costs, than it had before the coronavirus pandemic.An Art Deco portraitist who was married and had female lovers, Lempicka was born in Poland in 1898 and lived in Russia, which she fled because of the Russian Revolution; France, which she fled because of World War II; and then the United States and Mexico. Though her art and her social life glittered for a period, she later faded from prominence, and died in 1980. In recent years, her art has sold strongly; contemporary collectors of her work include Madonna.The show, scheduled to begin performances March 19 and to open April 14 at the Longacre Theater, features music by Matt Gould and lyrics by Carson Kreitzer, who also collaborated on the book. The director is Rachel Chavkin, the Tony Award-winning director of “Hadestown,” and choreography is by Raja Feather Kelly.“This is a massive epic, in the company of ‘Les Mis’ or ‘Evita,’ about this incredible artist who has been, for a variety of reasons, dismissed from our history books,” Chavkin said. “It’s fierce and queer and traces the first half of the 20th century through the eyes of this very complicated and ambitious and visionary woman.”Eden Espinosa, a onetime Elphaba in “Wicked,” will star in the title role. She is currently appearing in a new musical, “The Gardens of Anuncia,” running Off Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater. The rest of the “Lempicka” cast has not yet been announced.The musical has had two previous productions, at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts in 2018 and last year at La Jolla Playhouse in California, as well as several workshops and presentations over the years. (A previous effort to dramatize Lempicka’s life, a play called “Tamara,” ran in New York in 1987.)“Lempicka” is being produced by Seaview, a production company founded by Greg Nobile and Jana Shea, and Jenny Niederhoffer. It is being capitalized for up to $19.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. More