Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen Off-Broadway Reviews

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 musica...

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.”

You can’t get very deep if you haven’t decided where to dig, and Memoirs is aiming all over the place. I kept imagining a version of the musical that tilted all the way toward the dark and perverse, or one that stayed farcical. At one point Sakae...

You can’t get very deep if you haven’t decided where to dig, and Memoirs is aiming all over the place. I kept imagining a version of the musical that tilted all the way toward the dark and perverse, or one that stayed farcical. At one point Sakae reprimands Colette for writing stories about her life that are nothing new, and she counters by insisting that at least the ordinariness of her woe makes her relatable. It feels like the musical is trying to give itself an out. Don’t we watch stories to see something exceptional? Or at least something rendering with enough clarity to make an ordinary perversion be seen in a new light?

Similarly, the best of the show's flashier moments come thanks to Nkeki Obi-Melekwe's grounded performance as Nana, a high-end call girl who doesn't take disrespect. Like Caruso and Jeacoma in "Somewhere in the Evening" (and unlike the third characte...

Similarly, the best of the show's flashier moments come thanks to Nkeki Obi-Melekwe's grounded performance as Nana, a high-end call girl who doesn't take disrespect. Like Caruso and Jeacoma in "Somewhere in the Evening" (and unlike the third character on stage, a distracting man-dog), she exhibits a refreshing and magnetic lack of capital-P Performance that helps to smooth over Leah Nanako Winkler (book) and Duncan Sheik's (score) oft-pedestrian writing more than any bit of glitz or shock. Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen may be all about voyeurism, but it proves that sometimes, the best things are left to the imagination.

There’s a stylish gloss to the overall production, from the red-tinted café table lamps to the billowy red bunting around the auditorium, that helps mask the thinness of the material. While Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen captures the look of undergr...

There’s a stylish gloss to the overall production, from the red-tinted café table lamps to the billowy red bunting around the auditorium, that helps mask the thinness of the material. While Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen captures the look of underground naughtiness, there’s nothing particularly sexy on display. The show is more interested in the quirky than the kinky, and in romanticizing a profession that in real life is rife with violence and exploitation.