Carson Kreitzer loves that Tamara de Lempicka lied. They were small lies: fibs that didn’t create international conflict, cause grave misfortune, or ruin lives (that we know of). A woman trying to make it as a painter in the male-dominated Paris art scene between the two World Wars, Lempicka needed to stretch the truth to be taken seriously, suggests Kreitzer, who’s part of the team behind Lempicka, a new Broadway musical opening this spring. The painter became an Art Deco star and a member of the avant-garde who ran with the likes of Picasso and Jean Cocteau, helped along by fabrications about, for instance, her daughter, whom she would introduce as her sister to appear younger to possible collaborators. A century later, her lavish lifestyle, theatrical paintings, and extreme chutzpah made her a prime candidate for an exuberant, lights-flashing musical.
“She was the protagonist, no question….She had this kind of delicious greed. She wanted things in a way that women weren’t allowed to,” Kreitzer says. “That’s part of the reason she lied all the time, because she had to, because she wouldn’t have gotten where she did if she was honest.”
Before Kreitzer brought the idea of Lempicka to her now collaborator Matt Gould, she had a “galaxy of women” history had overlooked that she wanted to bring into the mainstream. Lempicka was high on the list, and when she met Gould 14 years ago, Kreitzer says it felt like “kismet”—they clicked creatively and in the way they worked. While Kreitzer wrote Lempicka’s dialogue and lyrics and Gould composed the music, both take credit for the book, as they’ve pieced every moment of the show together.
When the musical felt ready to put in front of audiences, the team, who workshopped with several directors, quickly realized they needed the skill and nuance of Rachel Chavkin, who received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for Hadestown. After productions at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2018 and the La Jolla Playhouse in California in 2022, Lempicka will begin previews on Broadway on March 19.
The title character is played by Eden Espinosa, who became a Broadway darling as a fan-favorite Elphaba in Wicked. The show focuses on Lempicka’s life in Paris after her escape from the newly communist Russia, and the challenges presented by her identity: a culturally Jewish, bisexual Polish immigrant. “This is a character for now, for this moment in history when we have people going, ‘If you’re trans, you’re out. If you’re a woman, you don’t get to have autonomy over your body. If you’re a Jew or a Muslim living in Gaza, sorry. You don’t belong here. We don’t want to hear your voice,’ ” Gould says. “Something in our spirits knew, ‘We have to tell this story because it’s going to happen again,’ and it is happening again.”
It’s rare for a Broadway show to center a complex woman like Lempicka, especially an older one. The musical has a rallying cry at the end of Act 1 with the song “Woman Is,” declaring everything one can be. In Lempicka’s case, that’s a painter and a mother, who’s also a longing, sexual being. “For a titular role to be spanning a woman’s life from late teens to late seventies—it doesn’t happen,” Espinosa says.
The show is also part of a long-overdue breakthrough behind the scenes on Broadway, with a rare number of female directors leading musicals this Tony season. Maria Friedman directed a revelatory Merrily We Roll Along. Schele Williams is doing double duty, codirecting The Notebook and helming The Wiz. Jessica Stone, who directed the Tony powerhouse Kimberly Akimbo, returns for Water for Elephants; Leigh Silverman is directing Suffs; Dayna Taymor is leading The Outsiders; and Rebecca Frecknall is bringing Cabaret to Broadway from its London run.
And then there is Chavkin, who will direct the upcoming pre-Broadway run of Gatsby at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University this May. She directed The Thanksgiving Play earlier this season, in addition to Lempicka. “I really believe this is a zeitgeist show,” Chavkin says. “What this show has to say about women and our existence as full-blooded human beings and the need of that; what it has to say about our capacity for sexual appetite and nuance in the bedroom and within a marriage…I just think it’s time for it.”
Her staging of Lempicka is inspired by the artist’s clean brushstrokes and vibrant colors, as well as her need to survive and succeed. “We’ve made this choice to focus on the human story and the sweat that Tamara put into her life, even though she never showed it,” Chavkin says. “She was painting to survive. She was making art to live. That’s how she lived, both on a technical level and spiritual level. So we really wanted to feel her.”
Eden Espinosa stars as Tamara de Lempicka.
The musical is a synesthete’s dream. Paloma Young’s costumes mirror Lempicka’s work: Her fabrics include the bold colors of the paintings and pay homage to her cubism. The Kelly green of Lempicka’s Young Girl in Green (1927) can be felt through the music, while the metallics of Self-Portrait (Tamara in the Green Bugatti) (1929) are mirrored in Riccardo Hernández’s set. (Outside the Longacre Theatre, fans can see replicas of her pieces on display.)
In an age of movie adaptations and jukebox musicals, Lempicka stands out as a fully new concept. Musicals without a baked-in fandom often struggle to last, even if the show is adored by critics. (Kimberly Akimbo announced it will close after just over a year and a half on Broadway, whereas Wicked, which has now run for over 20 years, plays to packed houses every night.) It’s more difficult than ever for an original work to survive, especially a work about a female artist. Lempicka is, in a word, a risk.
“It’s hard with a show like this; it’s a complete wild card,” Espinosa says. She notes that the music videos and an early release of some of the songs to streaming have helped fuel excitement. “People are already attached to the music,” she says. “I think that it’s going to have its little cult fan base that is then going to just grow. Once people see the show, they might not know what they’re in for, but I really believe that the work is going to speak for itself.” As for the complicated, alluring, and glamorous woman she channels? “She’s up there or down there, we don’t know, but I think she’s thrilled. Any moment that she got to have her name on people’s lips, I think she’s just like, yes.”
This article appears in the March 2024 issue of ELLE.