The reviews are in for Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen, the last musical Duncan Sheik completed. He died in September at 56, a week before previews began, and nearly every critic writes with that loss, and with Spring Awakening, in mind. With a book by Leah Nanako Winkler from Moyoco Anno’s manga and staging by Rob Ashford, it opened on Thursday, October 15, in The Night Egg, a new in-the-round room at the Culture Club, the West Chelsea building that housed Sleep No More. Sophia Anne Caruso plays Colette, a young worker in a Parisian brothel who is paid by a client to write down her life. Caruso comes out of it with the best notices of anyone; the show around her fares less well.
The verdict: thirteen reviews in so far. Only two outlets give a score, New York Stage Review with 3 out of 5 and Culture Sauce with 2, an average of 2.5; the other eleven publish no rating. The critics agree on two things. Sophia Anne Caruso is the reason to go, praised in almost every notice, and the room itself, Scott Pask’s red-velvet Night Egg dressed in Catherine Zuber’s costumes, is a spectacle. They are just as close to agreed that Leah Nanako Winkler’s book is thin and familiar. Duncan Sheik’s last score is where they divide: Stage and Cinema, Times Square Chronicles and Cititour hear it as haunting and melodic, while The New York Times, Vulture, New York Stage Review and The Front Row Center find it repetitive or quickly forgotten.
What are critics saying about Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen?
The New York Times
"‘Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen’ Review: Duncan Sheik’s Tale of Eros"
Reviewer: Elisabeth Vincentelli
Vincentelli measures the show against Spring Awakening, Sheik’s own model of how a musical can handle sex, and finds it nodding blandly at eroticism instead. She has little patience for the therapy-speak lyrics or for the slow-motion tableaux of writhing bodies in Rob Ashford’s staging.
"The new musical by Sheik — who tragically died a week before previews started — does not land nearly as elegantly, or hotly."
She credits Sophia Anne Caruso’s Colette with an appealing, cool distance, and sees the musical as really being about Colette finding herself as a writer, though she finds the ballads Sheik wrote for her too alike.
Read Elisabeth Vincentelli’s full review in The New York Times
Vulture
"Two productions that aim for your most atavistic senses."
Reviewer: Jackson McHenry
McHenry reviews the show alongside A Ghost in Your Ear, and finds a musical that never decides what it wants to be, caught between the dark and the farcical. He hears a score built on trancelike, sustained notes that convey Colette’s dissociation but never build, and worried that even Caruso was shredding her voice for little reward.
"big on braggadocio if low on coherence, obsessed with perversion and unclear about what it exactly means by the term."
The Night Egg itself is the event for him: Scott Pask’s enfolding velvet club, and Catherine Zuber’s statement corsets.
TheWrap
"‘Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen’ Off Broadway Review: Sophia Anne Caruso Is the New Edith Piaf"
Reviewer: Robert Hofler
Hofler’s notice is built around Caruso, whom he compares to Piaf for producing an enormous sound from a slight frame, in what he calls a starmaking performance. The story, though, he finds tired and the characters cardboard, and he calls one plot point a total muddle.
"What gives this tired narrative some new juice is Caruso’s strong vocals…"
He singles out “Immured” as a real keeper of a torch song, despite what he considers a terrible title.
TheaterMania
"Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen, Duncan Sheik’s Dark Swan Song"
Reviewer: Zachary Stewart
Stewart was pleasantly surprised by how fairly the show treats sex workers and their clients, against the cartoonish brothel tradition of the musical. He finds many flaws that will now never be fixed, the lyrics above all, but likes Sheik’s moody music in Or Matias’s orchestrations.
"…takes her place as one of the theater’s most captivating leading ladies in this rip-your-heart-out performance."
He also praises Elsa Keefe, Leanne Antonio and Caleb Marshall, and calls the show a bittersweet bookend to a career that began with Spring Awakening.
New York Stage Review
"Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen: Tuned Up Bawdy House Fun"
Reviewer: David Finkle · 3 out of 5
Finkle could not stop thinking of Cabaret, and suspects the creators set out to take it a few naughty steps further. He credits Ashford with keeping the action cracking along, calls Caruso thrilling-voiced, and thinks Zuber’s costumes may be among the best of her career.
"Sheik has written a bold and strong score, but once the songs have ended, they don’t leave many lasting impressions."
His is one of only two notices in the field to give a rating.
Culture Sauce
"Duncan Sheik’s ‘Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen’ substitutes quirk for kink"
Reviewer: Thom Geier · 2 out of 5
The lowest score in the field. Geier calls the book clunky and the direction overly broad, and finds Colette’s devotion to a cad so stubborn that it costs her the audience’s sympathy.
"a luxuriously mounted but wan new musical adapted from a popular manga graphic novel by Moyoco Anno."
The numbers perk things up: Caruso nails Sheik’s torch songs with a velvety belt, though he finds a sameness to the tunes and a muddy sound mix in the space.
New York Theatre Guide
"‘Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen’ Off-Broadway review — new manga musical wants you to watch"
Reviewer: Gillian Russo
Russo prefers the stripped-down moments to the writhing ensemble numbers, above all Caruso’s spare, mournful song to Léon in a single pool of light. She finds Nkeki Obi-Melekwe’s grounded Nana the best of the flashier scenes, smoothing over writing she calls often pedestrian.
"…it proves that sometimes, the best things are left to the imagination."
She admires Pask’s luxe room, but warns that seating on all sides means some key moments are seen from behind.
New York Theater
Reviewer: Jonathan Mandell
Mandell hears a moment of pure Spring Awakening in Caruso’s lovelorn cry, but finds the show reminds him more often of the recent Cabaret revival, and that whatever is Japanese about the source is crowded out by familiarity. He recalls no exceptional melodies, though the principals all get to show off their voices.
"what a consistent, eclectic talent we lost when Duncan Sheik died last month at the age of 56."
Set beside Sheik’s other scores, he writes, that is what this one drives home.
Times Square Chronicles
"Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen: A Beautifully Decadent World With a Star at Its Center"
Reviewer: Suzanna Bowling
Bowling finds the score haunting, likening its spirit to Sondheim’s Passion, and the design a visual feast. Her quarrel is with Winkler’s book, which she thinks never finds the originality its premise needs.
"a frustratingly familiar story, an insufficiently developed book, and one extraordinary young actress who makes the entire evening worth experiencing."
She also praises Jenny Powers’s chilling Madame and Ashford’s fluid, sensual staging.
Read Suzanna Bowling’s full review at Times Square Chronicles
Cititour
"Will You Love Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen?"
Reviewer: Brian Scott Lipton
Lipton values the ballad-heavy score as a reminder of Sheik’s gift for lovely melodies and clean rhymes, but finds the plot muddled and suspects the creators are not sure what the show is about. Obi-Melekwe, he says, practically walks off with it, and Jenny Powers is glorious as the madame.
"But fans expecting another “Spring Awakening” are in for a rude awakening."
The clients’ episodes, cleverly staged by Ashford, are what enliven an evening that can turn maudlin.
Stage and Cinema
"A Brothel of Riches"
Reviewer: Gregory Bernard
One of the warmest notices. Bernard admires the design from Pask’s bed descending from above to Brian Tovar’s lighting, and calls Sheik’s music passionate and original, with “Immured” a standout. His one reservation is a presentational style that keeps the audience watching rather than feeling.
"it’s far more than a Cabaret or Moulin Rouge knockoff."
He finds the uplifting ending abrupt, but undeniably successful.
The Front Row Center
Reviewer: Sarah Downs
Downs finds everyone trying so hard to be sexy that it tips into cringe, and a 90-minute story that still needs a tell-don’t-show wrap-up. She thinks the cast does what it can: Caruso carries the show, and Keefe is sweetly affecting as Carmen.
"Despite lush production values and terrific performances, the musical is a triumph of ambition over taste."
Pask, Tovar and Zuber all earn high praise; the book, the music and the lyrics do not.
Pages on Stages
"Go Revel in the Atmosphere"
Reviewer: Mason Pilevsky
Pilevsky opens by paying tribute to Sheik, whose score he hears as new and playful rather than recycled, and he is taken with Caruso’s dizzying way with it. The book, he says, left much to be desired.
"It wasn’t specific. It wasn’t good storytelling. It wasn’t emotionally stirring or thought provoking."
Even so, he recommends it as a high-energy space to play, with no judgment of what anyone likes to look at.
For more of what the New York critics have been saying, read our roundups for Midnight at the Daryl Roth Theatre and A Ghost in Your Ear at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre. And catch up on the “Hoops” video and new production photos released on opening day.
Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen runs at The Night Egg at the Culture Club, 530 West 27th Street, through January 3, 2027. The running time is 90 minutes with no intermission. Production photos by Andy Henderson.
