Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen, the manga musical that carries the last score Duncan Sheik completed, will give its final performance at The Night Egg at the Culture Club on Sunday, November 15, at 7:30 p.m. The production had been booking through January 3, 2027, so the run stops seven weeks short of that date.
By then it will have played 18 previews and 35 regular performances. Previews began on Friday, September 25, and the musical opened on Thursday, October 15, in a new room at 530 West 27th Street in Chelsea, the building that was once home to the Twilo nightclub and later to Sleep No More. The venue borrows its name from the maison close at the center of the story.
The closing was announced by the producers, Kenny Kurokawa, RAYMAN and Antonio Marion. "We are incredibly proud of what this company has created," said Kurokawa, the lead producer, who added that the team looks forward to "exploring new opportunities to share Memoirs with audiences in the future," and spoke of celebrating the legacy of what he called Sheik's final work.
The source is Moyoco Anno's manga, serialized in Japan from 2013 to 2018, and the production bills itself as the first manga to become an American musical in English. Leah Nanako Winkler wrote the book to Sheik's music and lyrics, Rob Ashford directed and choreographed, and Or Matias supervised the music and wrote the vocal and incidental arrangements. Sheik, whose two Tony Awards came for Spring Awakening, died in September, about a week before the first preview.
Sophia Anne Caruso plays Colette, a young writer in 20th-century Paris who works at the Night Egg and turns its clients' fantasies and confessions into her own material, while an old, damaging attachment to her childhood love, Léon (Cory Jeacoma), keeps drawing her back. Nkeki Obi-Melekwe is Nana, Marc delaCruz is Sakae and Jenny Powers is Madame, with Leanne Antonio, Kailin Brown, Alexa de Barr, Michael Everett, Elsa Keefe, Jaedynn Latter, Austin Lesch, Nika Lindsay, Caleb Marshall, Jessie Peltier, Michael Starr and Thomas Winter completing the company.
The design team is Scott Pask (sets), Catherine Zuber (costumes), Brian Tovar (lighting), Cody Spencer (sound) and Tom Watson (hair and wigs), with casting by The Telsey Office / Patrick Goodwin, CSA.
Tickets for the remaining performances at The Night Egg are on sale now.
