Eden Espinosa, George Abud, and the company of Lempicka. Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

At its best, Lempicka, the new musical by Carson Kreitzer and Matt Gould based on the life of Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka, is a joyous paean to the power of art and the will of a woman artist to claim that power for herself: aesthetically boisterous, exuberantly queer, melding the aesthetics of mid-twentieth-century Paris with flashes of a late-twentieth-century dance club. Here, art allows one to exert a small sliver of control over an uncontrollable universe—and when history rises up to mock that control (as it did for Lempicka, whose life was upended by two World Wars and the Russian Revolution), the show reminds us that art remains.  Lempicka is also engaging when it dramatizes the great sweeps of twentieth-century history in a flash: the Russian Revolution; the sweep from the Roaring Twenties to the brink of the Second World War; even an incisive glimpse into postwar Hollywood and the lives of rich emigres. At its worst, Lempicka gives us a love triangle that feels pedestrian even though one of the sides of the triangle is queer: woman torn between two lovers, ultimately loses both. 

While it is still noteworthy to see a lesbian relationship at the heart of a Broadway musical, both of the romances–Tamara (Eden Espinosa) with her husband, Tadeusz (Andrew Samonsky), and her model/muse, Rafaela (Amber Iman), suffer from songs that tend toward either exposition or the saccharine, lacking the cleverness and energy, even the passion, that we see elsewhere in the show. There’s more sizzle in “What She Sees,” the battle in song that occurs when Tadeusz and Rafaela meet at one of Tamara’s gallery shows, than any of the actual love duets; there’s more heart in “Just This Way,” sung by Tamara’s patroness (Beth Leavel) as she sits for the portrait she hopes her husband will remember her by after her death, than in the end of either of Tamara’s central romances. 

Which is not to say that Espinosa, Samonsky, and Iman are not giving solid performances throughout. It’s just that their love triangle seems cut from a different, more conventional musical than the rest of the show. Samonsky and Espinosa feel like old-fashioned Broadway romantic leads, with Samonsky’s sweet, melodic tenor and Espinosa’s clear, soaring voice, and Iman brings a brashness and soulful roughness to Rafaela. It’s just that there’s no compelling vigor in either relationship. But it’s some of the supporting performers who’ll stick with me: George Abud’s barn-burning Marinetti, Natalie Joy Johnson’s sly Suzy Solidor, Beth Leavel’s effortlessly heartbreaking Baroness. 

Lempicka the musical for the most part succeeds anyway, because the creative team, led by director Rachel Chavkin, embraces its duality, letting the pretty, often nostalgic romantic scenes remain simple, almost sweet, while amping up everything around them: The big sweeping historical numbers take on a edge of techno, with choreographer Raja Feather Kelly’s movement and Paloma Young’s costumes for the ensemble evoking Vogue-era Madonna, cone bras and all (not entirely inapt, considering that Madonna is a major collector of Lempicka’s work). Riccardo Hernández’s set uses the sinuous ironwork of Paris as its emblem, and fills the space with empty picture frames so we can always literally see Lempicka and her patrons through the paintings (which get brought in via Peter Nigrini’s projections). The bravura supporting performances, from the ensemble on up to the other denizens of the Paris art scene, sweep the audience along on a glorious roller-coaster ride: Tamara, Rafaela, and Tadeusz may be having a love story among themselves, but artist Filipo Marinetti (Abud) and nightclub hostess Suzy Solidor (Johnson) are playing to the crowd with maximum wow–as, for that matter, is Amber Iman in her first number, “Don’t Bet Your Heart,” before she and Tamara become lovers, where she literally stops traffic with her sheer force of personality.

Tamara de Lempicka’s life spanned the tumults of the twentieth century—and the show makes clever use of both archival photos and newsreels and images of her work (Nigrini’s projections, which add visual context and underscoring subtly throughout as well as bringing us Lempicka’s art) to situate us in time and place. Kreitzer’s narrative differs from reality in several key spots, but here’s how Lempicka plays it: born to Polish Jewish parents, Tamara marries a minor aristocrat, who’s arrested as the Russian Revolution kicks off. After Tamara puts herself at great risk to get him out of prison, they flee to Paris with their young daughter, where Tamara takes up painting when Tadeusz can’t or won’t find a job. 

Discovered by a wealthy art collector, Baron Raoul Kuffner (Nathaniel Stampley), Tamara begins to study with Filippo Marinetti. This is one of the main places where Lempicka breaks with history; Marinetti was an enormously influential philosopher of art, writer, and progenitor of the Futurist that would later be taken up by Mussolini, but he was neither Lempicka’s mentor nor a visual artist as much as an impresario. His slide from futurist aesthetics to fascist politics seems to be used in the story mostly to give a personal connection to the crumbling of the Parisian avant-garde and more-or-less-openly gay scene that Lempicka inhabits; stylistically, the kind of intensely embodied nudes that Lempicka painted do not sit well with Futurism’s glorification of war and the machine. Kreitzer acknowledges Marinetti’s embrace of anti-Semitism and contempt for gay people and for that matter women, but still allows him enormous influence over Lempicka and enormous magnetism here, especially in Abud’s indelible performance both as Marinetti and in a one-scene role as the Russian commandant with whom Tamara must negotiate for her husband’s freedom. You can almost feel the audience jolted with his gonzo intensity every time he steps foot onstage, even after his turn to Fascism.  

Marinetti’s guidance leads to a breakthrough in Tamara’s art, especially after she crosses paths with, and is immediately drawn to, the prostitute Rafaela, who models for her and quickly becomes her lover. Tamara and Rafaela’s affair draws them into the circle of Suzy Solidor, a friend of Marinetti’s who also aims to run Paris’s classiest and most public lesbian bar. (The scene set in that bar, anchored by Solidor’s song “Women,” is another crowd-pleaser where Chavkin, Kelly, and Young braid the aesthetics of a joyfully queer future into the show.)  But then history starts to turn darker again: WWII looms, Tadeusz and Rafaela find out about each other, and Tamara has to make some difficult choices. 

Throughout, Tamara’s relationship to her art remains more vivid, more nuanced, and more compelling than her relationships with people: It’s a childhood passion she puts away upon marrying. It’s a skill she can use as a penniless immigrant that’s more lucrative than working as a cleaner. It’s a way of exerting control in a world that has taken so much away from her. It’s a way of imposing her female gaze, her identity, on the society portrait, the most commercial of art forms.

In a way Lempicka is underscoring its own point: Human relationships may wither and disappear from memory. Art is immortality. Art is the future. When Lempicka luxuriates in its artistic flourishes, when it looks toward its own immortality, it succeeds best.