‘House of McQueen’ is an unfortunate fashion fail (Off Broadway review)

The best part of House of McQueen, a paean to the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen, doesn’t even occur on the stage of the cavernous new Off Broadway venue dubbed the Mansion at Hudson Yards. Just off the lobby bar in this univiting warehouse space, where they’ve squeezed in roughly 500 raked seats with difficult sightlines and less legroom than the coach section of a Spirit Airlines flight, there’s a narrow room where roughly 20 classic couture outfits by McQueen are on display (sadly with little explanation beyond their date of origin and the name of the collector who loaned the piece for display). These showcase the singular work of an artist who catapulted to fame in his early 20s both for his self-titled brand as well as a five-year run as Givenchy’s chief designer.

McQueen, who died by suicide in 2010 at age 40, approached his brief, tumultuous life with an almost visible chip on his shoulder, a hurried approach to achieving fame, and an uncompromising vision for producing clothes that would leave an impression if not always flatter their wearer. His story has been chronicled before, in retrospective museum exhibits, Dana Thomas’s biography Gods and Kings, and a memorable 2018 documentary. But Darrah Cloud’s fever dream of a script, which is made up short scenes that jump around in time and place, is a crazy quilt of incomprehensibility that seems to lift its limited plot points from Wikipedia.

Certainly, there’s not much narrative or psychological depth to be found here as we follow a fey, fashion-loving boy (Cody Braverman) in working-class East London who faces withering dismissal from a taxi-driver dad (Denis Lambert) who wants to butch him up and quiet support from his mother (Emily Skinner) and older sister (Jonina Thorsteinsdottir). Bridgerton star Luke Newton, with his rough-and-tumble accent and buzzcut hair, looks and sounds the part as the older Lee, who switches to his middle name, Alexander, when he launches his business to appear more high-class. But there’s a hollowness to his performance that is echoed by the opaque emotions in director Sam Helfrich’s production.

Scenes fly by, with a multitude of characters introduced and just as quickly dispatched. The jumbled chronology only exacerbates the sense of alienation as we get a not-exactly-legal wedding in Ibiza before we meet any of the other men in his life, including a closeted married man. (It doesn’t help that most of these suitors are played interchangeably by the same actor, Fady Demian.) Skinner’s oh-so-typical adoring mom remains supportive but befuddled at her son’s penchant for ripping up his creations to achieve a desired macabre effect, as does his early mentor Isabella Blow (Catherine LeFrere), a curious figure on the London fashion scene who here is depicted as a high-society patroness turned cash-strapped hanger-on. The real Blow, the daughter of a knighted military officer who disinherited her, is a fascinating subject worthy of her own show. (In addition to helping to launch McQueen by buying up the entirety of his graduate show — in installments because she was broke at the time — she’s credited with discovering the milliner Philip Treacy as well as models Sophie Dahl and Stella Tennant.)

A telling sign of how Cloud’s play skims the surface of McQueen’s life is the repeated appearance of an on-stage news reader (Margaret Odett) whose function is to narrate the major beats in McQueen’s career trajectory, from Savile Row tailor’s assistant to high-end apprentice to fashion student to a wunderkind hired to rejuvenate the Givenchy brand. She also doubles as a fashion-school professor who questions McQueen’s fascination with “viscera, slashings, streams of blood” — but neither she nor the play seems to be interested in waiting for him to provide a satisfactory answer to that question that goes to the heart of McQueen’s artistic output. Instead, she portentously assures him that he’s definitely ready for the fashion world but “It’s the rest of the world that I’m worried about.”

There are several scenes where Newton’s McQueen is seen in the act of creation, draping fabric around an onstage model or sticking feathers into the bands of a mummylike wrap dress. But he’s mostly silent during these scenes, or addressing other characters about his growing drug habit, the intense demands on his time to produce new collections, or some other matter. But why he was drawn to producing looks based on Jack the Ripper or rape victims? The show is silent on that point, and confusingly re-creates scenes of little-boy Lee dressing like a fairy princess and reveling in his other passion, for underwater life (in sequences bathed in Robert Wierzel’s phantasmagoric lighting).

Even as the story drags and befuddles, the physical production remains strong, making good use of the wide, narrow stage and two trap doors. And what about the costumes? Kaye Voyce’s designs might look stronger if the show didn’t include projections (by Brad Peterson) of some of McQueen’s most famed runway shows and that incredible assemblage of authentic looks just off the lobby bar. ★☆☆☆☆

HOUSE OF McQUEEN
The Mansion at Hudson Yards, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes (with 1 intermission)
Tickets on sale through Sept. 28 for $40 to $197