Tony-winning director eager for second life of 'complex,' women-driven 'Lempicka'
Published: 26 Jan. 2026, 13:58
Updated: 26 Jan. 2026, 18:52
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- LEE JIAN
- [email protected]
Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI
![Musical director Rachel Chavkin speaks to reporters ahead of ″Lempicka″'s March opening in Korea, on Thursday at the Gangdong Arts Center in Gangdong District, eastern Seoul. [YONHAP]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/01/26/11a27114-35f7-4a5c-a6ab-fe4a0537ef86.jpg)
Musical director Rachel Chavkin speaks to reporters ahead of ″Lempicka″'s March opening in Korea, on Thursday at the Gangdong Arts Center in Gangdong District, eastern Seoul. [YONHAP]
[INTERVIEW]
Tony-winning director Rachel Chavkin candidly stood by her musical “Lempicka” on Thursday, saying that the show — centered on a female artist — received a mixed critical reception on Broadway in part because misogyny shapes audiences’ expectations of theater narratives.
“There are a number of great male characters in the show, but none of them are centered as either the hero or the antagonist,” Chavkin told the Korea JoongAng Daily during a roundtable interview at the Gangdong Arts Center in Gangdong District, eastern Seoul. “There isn’t really an antagonist for [the protagonist] Tamara, other than time and the limits of her own appetite. I think a lot of male reviewers — and certainly some female reviewers as well — weren’t able to see her story because we’re so used to men functioning in particular ways within a woman’s narrative.
“[The point of the story] was genuinely missed by many people because they didn’t know how to watch [the musical].”
Now, two years after its short-lived New York run, Chavkin is enthused for “Lempicka” to begin a second life at NOL Theater Coex in Gangnam District for three months starting March 21. This marks the show's first international production.
![Poster for the Korean production of "Lempicka" [NOL UNIVERSE/ SCREEN CAPTURE]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/01/26/607aa68c-be45-4dba-9728-4a65dbc7b3d8.gif)
Poster for the Korean production of "Lempicka" [NOL UNIVERSE/ SCREEN CAPTURE]
“There are so many artworks that, when they first come out, people don’t necessarily know how to receive them,” she said. “Over time, as audiences begin to understand what a work is aiming toward, they also learn how to watch it. I’m thrilled that this show, which I believe in deeply, gets to begin its next life.”
“Lempicka” is a sprawling biographical musical that spans nearly 60 years in the life of Polish bisexual painter Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980). With her works having been collected by other trailblazing artists, including Madonna and Barbra Streisand, Lempicka was a formidable modernist who turned to painting as a means of survival after fleeing the Russian Revolution with her husband and child and settling in Paris.
While her work was rediscovered amid a renewed interest in Art Deco in the late 20th century, Lempicka’s work may still be unfamiliar to many, as she fell into relative obscurity following World War II.
!["Autoportrait" (1929) is a self-portrait of Tamara de Lempicka in a green Bugatti. [JOONGANG ILBO]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/01/26/38cedbda-160d-4511-a47f-6be2eb45f8a8.jpg)
"Autoportrait" (1929) is a self-portrait of Tamara de Lempicka in a green Bugatti. [JOONGANG ILBO]
But at the height of her popularity, Lempicka was best known for her commissioned portraits — particularly of women — and for a signature style shaped by cubism and neoclassicism. Her works’ geometric forms, bold colors and sleek modern aesthetic celebrate the Machine Age (roughly 1880-1945), a period defined by rapid industrialization, mass production and electrification. Her sharply contoured figures and lacquered surfaces reveal not only formidable technical control but also the psychological tensions simmering beneath a meticulously constructed facade.
The musical, much like the artist who inspired it, has proven resistant to easy categorization. Though “Lempicka” earned three Tony nominations — for Lead Actress in a Musical, Featured Actress in a Musical and Scenic Design — it received mixed reviews from both critics and audiences, ultimately closing after just 41 performances in May 2024.
The question, then, is whether the show might fare differently in Korea. And, is a Broadway success the final verdict on a musical’s worth?
![This photo shows a scene from the 2021 Korean production of ″Hadestown,″ staged at the LG Arts Center in Gangseo District, western Seoul. Rachel Chavkin is the original Broadway show's director. [S&CO]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/01/26/0f13ce31-29a1-4be4-a1b2-6ce25db771d5.jpg)
This photo shows a scene from the 2021 Korean production of ″Hadestown,″ staged at the LG Arts Center in Gangseo District, western Seoul. Rachel Chavkin is the original Broadway show's director. [S&CO]
When a production is translated and restaged with a new cast in another country, the material can resonate very differently with viewers. Korea, while broadly conservative as a society, is more permissive inside its theaters. Musical audiences here tend to be younger and predominantly female, with a demonstrable appetite for female-centered historical narratives, as seen in the sustained popularity of works such as “Mata Hari” and “Frida Kahlo.”
Chavkin’s earlier productions have already been successful in Korea. Both “Hadestown” and “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812” have had two runs, which suggest familiarity with and receptiveness to her sleek theatrical language.
Chavkin won the Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical in 2019 for “Hadestown,” which opened at Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theatre that April and continues to run today. She has also received two Drama Desk Awards, one for “The Great Comet” in 2017 and another for “Hadestown” in 2019, as well as three Obie Awards, including for her direction of “The Royale: A Play in Six Rounds” in 2016.
“I am drawn to working on shows that are unlike anything I've ever seen,” said Chavkin. “The goal is [...] not necessarily to be original but to make a place that I haven't been to before.”
![This photo shows a scene from the 2021 Korean production of ″Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812,″ staged at the Universal Art Center in Gwangjin District, eastern Seoul. Rachel Chavkin is the original Broadway show's director. [SHOWNOTE]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/01/26/a2ff7f76-d3f0-401b-ac94-3854c5b515e1.jpg)
This photo shows a scene from the 2021 Korean production of ″Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812,″ staged at the Universal Art Center in Gwangjin District, eastern Seoul. Rachel Chavkin is the original Broadway show's director. [SHOWNOTE]
And “Lempicka,” with its book by Carson Kreitzer (lyrics) and Matt Gould (score), was an “incredibly unusual musical.”
“I've never known a show with this exciting of a score combined with the depth of the story at its core,” Chavkin said. She then described the music as stylistically modern, fierce and electronic, and the mature, nuanced character development and the story of the marriage and the two relationships as “real, honest, full in a way that musicals often lack.”
The musical follows a love triangle with Tamara; her husband, Tadeusz; and her muse and lover, Rafaela, against a backdrop of 20th-century Europe’s political and cultural upheavals. Caught between domestic security and artistic and homoerotic awakening, Tamara must choose not simply between two lovers but between competing versions of herself.
“I hope the audiences feel how dynamic and messy the emotions are for Tamara, Rafaela and Tadeusz,” Chavkin said.
History-wise, the show is less discerning, Chavkin noted — and deliberately so. For instance, Rafaela, though she did exist, wasn’t as central to Tamara’s life as the show puts her to be. Tamara’s relationship to Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti, an Italian poet who founded the Futurist movement and influenced Tamara’s paintings, is mostly fictional as well .
“Carson Kreitzer and Matt Gould distill a vast amount of history into a few key events that allow us to track, in particular, the rise of fascism across Europe and how it shaped Tamara’s life and the lives of those closest to her,” Chavkin said.
“There are also tricks in the book, [such as expanding] on the relationship between [Tamara and] Rafaela and being deliberately fuzzy about its timeline, alongside the unraveling of [her] marriage to Tadeusz,” she added. “The idea is that you feel Tamara moving through her emotional arc more than you’re tracking a strict historical chronology of Europe between the wars.”
![Tamara de Lempicka's painting of her lover, Rafaela, ″La Belle Rafaela″ (1927) [SCREEN CAPTURE/SOTHEBY'S]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/01/26/96bbc30b-3665-43a7-9532-9a47fdd6e3d3.jpg)
Tamara de Lempicka's painting of her lover, Rafaela, ″La Belle Rafaela″ (1927) [SCREEN CAPTURE/SOTHEBY'S]
Factual liberties that may trouble New York critics are unlikely to pose the same problem for general audiences. More significant, perhaps, is the casting for Korea’s “Lempicka,” which brings together a vocally excellent and stylistically diverse lineup.
The titular role of Tamara — originated on Broadway by Eden Espinosa — will be played in rotation by Kim Sun-young, Park Hye-na and Jung Sun-ah, all veteran divas in the Korean musical theater scene. Their casting suggests the possibility of markedly different interpretations of Tamara. Park and Kim have overlapped as Elphaba in “Wicked” and Persephone in “Hadestown.” Jung, by contrast, is best known for more perky and witty roles, including Glinda in “Wicked” and Amneris in “Aida.”
Tamara’s lover and muse, Rafaela — originated by Amber Iman — will be alternated by Cha Ji-yeon, Lina and Son Seung-yeon. Cha, a seasoned performer, most recently starred as Francesca in “The Bridges of Madison County,” in which she distinguished herself among other portrayals of the role with a calibrated, nuanced performance that conveyed the emotional complexity and self-awareness of a middle-aged woman in an extramarital affair. Lina, a singer-actor, is also familiar with Chavkin’s theatrical language, having appeared as Persephone in “Hadestown.” Son, often dubbed “Korea’s Idina Menzel,” stands out as the youngest of the trio at 32, bringing a generational contrast that may further diversify the role.
Marinetti is played by Kim Ho-young and Cho Hyung-kyun. Tamara’s husband is slated to be played by Kim Woo-hyung and Kim Min-chul.
“I’m so wildly excited about this company,” said Chavkin. “I’m very aware that we have some true stars in the show, and I think that’s a testament to how rarely roles like this come along for women. I’m thrilled that artists of this caliber will get the chance to shine in this work.”
She added that Korean audiences would encounter versions of Tamara unlike anything they had previously seen from these performers. “I think they’ll see a Tamara who is both more daring and more desperate than audiences have ever seen these particular artists be in a musical before,” she said. “The show demands a kind of operatic emotionality while also delivering a real contemporary fierceness and edge, and that’s an unusually difficult combination to pull off.”
![Rachel Chavkin speaks to the Korean cast and crew of "Lempicka" set to open in March, at the Gangdong Arts Center in Gangdong District, eastern Seoul, on Jan.22. [NOL UNIVERSE]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/01/26/6127fb06-cee0-42be-a3ae-5ba2cb58e259.jpg)
Rachel Chavkin speaks to the Korean cast and crew of "Lempicka" set to open in March, at the Gangdong Arts Center in Gangdong District, eastern Seoul, on Jan.22. [NOL UNIVERSE]
But beyond the show’s commercial fortunes, Chavkin, a director known for politically and emotionally ambitious work, feels it is imperative that stories like “Lempicka” be told.
“Donald Trump and his administration would like to pretend that history is simple and clear,” Chavkin said. “They don’t want to dwell on the complexities and horrors of the past that continue to shape the present.
“So simply working on a show like ‘Lempicka,’ which acknowledges the harm we do to one another and the harm that has historically occurred and [...] asks audiences to sit with that complexity, already feels like a fight for the kind of world I want to live in.”
BY LEE JIAN [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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