(The Actors Studio Workshop production, May, 2005, directed by Carlin Glynn)

Maggi-Meg Reed as Léa and Erik Lautier as Chéri

CHÉRI

Music by Michael Dellaira Libretto by Susan Yankowitz

SYNOPSIS

ACT ONE

Prologue: The garden of Charlotte Peloux’s estate. Charlotte and Marie-Laure are in a heated negotiation over the financial details of the marriage they have arranged between Charlotte’s son Chéri and Marie-Laure’s daughter Edmée. Lili walks back and forth between them, trying to make sure the matter is settled quickly and amicably.

Scene One: Léa de Lonval’s bedroom. Léa and Chéri, who have been living together for six years, are in each other’s arms. It is morning, and they rise, still full of passion and play; Chéri admires himself in Léa's pearls and Léa teases him about his vanity and love of luxury. Chéri, full of himself, remarks on Léa’s age, and that Léa must certainly be the envy of all other women, since she alone possesses him.

Léa's friend (and probably former lover), Patron, enters to give the delicate Chéri a boxing lesson. While the lesson proceeds, Léa puts on the pearls and notices for the first time that her throat is thicker and less white, and the skin under her chin has grown slack.

Scene Two: Everyone has gathered for a party in the garden of Charlotte Peloux's estate. Léa arrives a bit late, after the other women have gossiped about her. When Chéri’s forthcoming marriage to Marie-Laure's nineteen year old daughter Edmée is announced, Léa grows faint. [LISTEN] Although she recovers sufficiently to exclaim with the others over the loveliness of the bride-to-be, she leaves the celebration as soon as she can, implying that she has a secret assignation. Edmée sings rapturously about her dream of marriage and gives Chéri her hand.

Scene Three: In Lea’s sitting room.

Léa asks Chéri how he feels about Edmée, and he replies that he feels nothing. But facts are facts: the girl has a fortune and young men must be married. He grows angry when Léa accepts the news indulgently and speaks of the new freedom she will have. But when he leaves, she begins to understand how shaken she is. Recognizing the arrival of "the stranger, grief,"[LISTEN] she plans to depart Paris immediately on a trip to the South of France.

Scene Four: Léa composes a letter to Charlotte, hinting that she is running off with a new lover. As she writes, the stage splits to reveal Charlotte reading the letter to Chéri.

In the final moments of the act, Chéri and Edmée envision their wedding trip to Italy, she exuberant, he despondent, while Léa stands in her doorway, surrounded by luggage, ready to begin her journey ‘south to the sun.’

ACT II

Scene One: At Le Dragon Bleu, a disreputable café.

Chéri has left Edmée and indulges himself by smoking opium and drinking absinthe in this dive of a cabaret. The seductive chanteuse strikes his fancy, and he hers, and they leave together for a night of debauchery. [LISTEN]

Scene Two: At Marie-Laure’s home, where Edmée and Chéri are living

temporarily. Chéri has returned home. Edmée accepts him calmly but soon reveals her anguish and jealousy of Léa. They fight bitterly although Edmée has no choice but to forgive him. Despite herself, she loves him. [LISTEN] Marie-Laure, who has been eavesdropping, comforts herself with the conviction that fights between husband and wife are natural and mean nothing.

Scene Three: Charlotte’s party for Léa, who has just returned from her trip to the south of France.

Léa shows her friends Marie-Laure and Patron “souvenirs”: photos of her conquests. Wondering what has delayed Chéri and Edmée, Charlotte tells Léa to disregard the false rumors she will hear about them, and takes pleasure in describing their renewed passion. Thinking she hears them arriving she jumps up, only to find the ancient Lili entering the room with Prince Guido, an awkward young boy who is, Lili says, the great love her life. All take delight in this perversity except Léa who, horrified, hurriedly leaves. The scene splits, showing Edmée, alone and holding back tears, writing a note to Charlotte explaining that she and Chéri, still newlyweds, after all, were so preoccupied that they simply forgot about the party.

Scene Four: Léa readies herself for bed carelessly. Chéri bursts in upon her, swearing that he has left his wife, and though Lea feigns indifference, she cannot help but "give way to the most terrible joy in her life.” [LISTEN]

In the morning light, while Chéri is still asleep, she quickly fantasizes an idyllic life with him in the country, and then just as quickly imagines the reality of that life -- she growing older and he finding her a burden. He’s still such a boy, she thinks; she should have made a man of him instead of using him for her selfish pleasure. He wakes as if from a dream, and is shocked to hear her say that while she could not resist a last night with him, his future is with Edmée. “Run after your youth, Chéri, go to your wife, it is her turn to tremble.” Pointing out the absurdity of their imagined life together by reminding him of Lili and Prince Guido, she urges him to leave, and he does, though stunned and certain that she does not mean it.

Lights come up on Edmée, who has resolved to make her own way, certain that Chéri will never love her as she deserves. Like Léa, she is determined to make a new life without Chéri. Chéri, meanwhile, cannot conceive of a future in which he doesn’t have everything he wants, and insists to himself that nothing will change.