Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen

Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen is a new one-act musical set in a Belle Époque Paris brothel. It is a world premiere, presented Off-Broadway as a commercial limited run by Kenny Kurokawa, RAYMAN and Antonio Marion, and it plays at The Night Egg at the Culture Club in Chelsea. The producers call it a first: a Japanese manga turned into an American stage musical, performed in English.

The musical adapts Moyoco Anno's manga, which shares its title and was published in Japan as Bikachō Shinshi Kaikoroku. Leah Nanako Winkler wrote the book, Duncan Sheik wrote the music and lyrics, and Rob Ashford directs and choreographs.

Anno serialized the manga in the Japanese magazine Feel Young between 2013 and 2018, and it was collected in two volumes. It won an Excellence Award from the Japan Media Arts Festival in 2020, and a short anime based on the story came out in 2015.

Around 1900, Colette comes to Paris with little money and finds work at the Night Egg, a small brothel where she answers to Madame. The house serves clients with unusual fantasies. One regular, Henry, turns up in feathers and plays at being a small bird. Colette's colleagues include Ivy and Carmen, and a married client named Willy is among the men who pass through.

Her private life is harder to manage than her work. Léon, her childhood love, takes much of the money she earns, and he is secretly seeing Nana, a high-priced courtesan. The musical keeps returning to this attachment and sets it against Colette's slowly growing independence.

A Japanese client named Sakae, who hopes to become a writer, asks Colette to keep a notebook of what she sees at the Night Egg. That notebook frames the story. Into it goes what her friends and clients confide, from odd requests to private sorrows, and the show follows Colette as she collects their stories.

Duncan Sheik wrote the music and lyrics and, with Or Matias, the orchestrations. Sheik won the 2007 Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations for Spring Awakening. His other theater scores include American Psycho, which played in London in 2013 and on Broadway in 2016, and, for Atlantic Theater Company, the music of The Secret Life of Bees. Matias is the music supervisor and is also credited with vocal and incidental music arrangements and co-orchestrations. This is the first collaboration between the two to reach the stage.

The score includes electronic elements. Recordings of Sheik's own backing vocals and guitar playing were worked into the show's tracks. A live band plays alongside them, led by music director Amanda Morton, with accordion, drums and percussion, bass and guitar. A keyboard programmer and an Ableton programmer are also credited.

Sheik became ill in summer 2026 and kept giving notes on the show from the hospital. He died in Manhattan on September 17, 2026, at age 56, eight days before the first preview. After his death, Matias shaped the score during previews using only material Sheik had written. The production is dedicated to his memory. One of his songs for the show, "Immured," was performed at a press event on September 21, 2026.

The Night Egg is a new in-the-round space built specifically for this production, and it seats about 300. Pask designed it as an immersive environment. The audience sits cabaret-style around the playing area, some close to the action and others farther back. The set includes a brass-framed bed at center stage that rises and sinks.

The room is named after the brothel where the manga takes place, a French establishment. It sits in the building at 530 West 27th Street that was home to Sleep No More, which played there from March 7, 2011, to January 5, 2025, after earlier tenants that included the nightclubs Sound Factory and Twilo. The choice of an unconventional venue was Sheik's idea, and he first saw the room as an empty black box, before Pask's set existed.

As of October 2026, the company has 17 performers: 16 in the company plus one swing. Sophia Anne Caruso plays Colette, Jenny Powers plays Madame, Nkeki Obi-Melekwe plays Nana, Cory Jeacoma plays Léon and Marc delaCruz plays Sakae, a role he took over in a September 2026 casting change. Caruso originated Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice on Broadway, won a Theatre World Award for it, and has been with this project since its first table read. Powers has Broadway roles in Grease (Rizzo) and Little Women (Meg). Obi-Melekwe's first Broadway show was Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, in which she played Turner.

The stage adaptation was announced in October 2020, with Ashford attached to direct and choreograph, and Winkler was hired to write the book that year. Gibney Dance hosted a private, invitation-only industry presentation on February 20 and 21, 2025.

On May 8, 2026, the Off-Broadway premiere at The Night Egg was announced. The producers released the dates, the design team and the casting of the lead on August 12, 2026. The first preview was September 25, 2026, and the official opening night was October 15, 2026. The production is RAYMAN's first as a producer in New York.