Playbill magazine and other outlets share a musical of Moyoco Anno‘s manga Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen will premiere off-Broadway this fall. The show will retell the story of Colette, a brothel worker in 20th century Paris, and feature music and lyrics by the Tony Award-winning Duncan Sheik (American Psycho), as well as a book by Peabody Award-winning playwright Leah Nanako Winkler (Ramy), and direction and choreography from Tony winner Rob Ashford (Thoroughly Modern Millie).
Sheik said in a statement, “When Rob Ashford approached me about possibly writing the score for a story based on a famous manga written by Moyoco Anno, I was flattered but a bit flummoxed. But once I got rolling along with Leah’s guidance and excellent ideas about how to adapt it, I was hooked.”
The show will be staged at The Night Egg, a new venue named after the club in the manga, at the Culture Club on 530 West 27th Street. Sheik says, “We all felt a more unique venue was best suited to this kind of production, where the audience has some freedom of movement and is not bound to a velvet seat. I am truly excited to help put this work in front of an audience, especially with this amazing group of creatives who comprise the team. Cannot wait to see you all at The Night Egg!”
While the show has been described in some reports as the first American, English-language musical based on a manga, that honor actually goes to The Four Immigrants, the 2017 production of Henry Kiyama‘s 1920s comic strip by Min Kahng. That play was staged at the TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, California, meaning Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen will at least become the first manga to be turned into an original American off-Broadway musical.
The manga was originally published by Shodensha from 2013 to 2018, and collected in two volumes, which have only been released in English digitally by Crunchyroll, Cork, and Azuki. It marked Anno’s third series to explore the lives of sex workers in different countries, following Sakuran and Buffalo 5 Girls, and was previously adapted into an anime short, co-produced by her husband Hideaki Anno (the creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion), in 2015.
The musical will premiere sometime this fall. You can sign up for updates via the official website.
