Duncan Sheik Worked on His Final Musical Until His Death. Now Its Cast Is Carrying On His Legacy (Exclusive)
Duncan Sheik Worked on His Final Musical Until His Death. Now Its Cast Is Carrying On His Legacy (Exclusive)
Dave Quinn, Eleanor JacobsSun, September 27, 2026 at 2:51 PM UTC
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Cory Jeacomankeki, Obi Melekwe Sophia Anne Caruso, Jenny Powers and Marc Delacruz at a press event for Duncan Sheik’s ‘Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen’Credit: Michaelah Reynolds -
Duncan Sheik continued working on his final musical, Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen, until shortly before his death on Sept. 17 at age 56
Book writer Leah Nanako Winkler tells PEOPLE she and Sheik were still collaborating while he was hospitalized after spending six years developing the show together
Star Sophia Anne Caruso says Sheik can be found “everywhere” in the musical and that his lyrics will remain unchanged: “Those were his words and we’re not going to change them”
Duncan Sheik’s final musical has made its way to the stage without him.
Just over a week after the Tony- and Grammy-winning composer died at age 56, Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen began performances Off-Broadway in New York City, bringing to life a musical Sheik had spent years developing.
And, as book writer Leah Nanako Winkler exclusively tells PEOPLE, Sheik remained involved with the production until the very end of his life. “We were working together, up until he was in the hospital bed,” Winkler says. “I just know that he was really proud of what we had created.”
Sheik died Sept. 17 in Manhattan. Four days later, Winkler and members of the Memoirs cast spoke with PEOPLE at a Sept. 21 press event at The Night Egg at Culture Club, where the musical would begin performances later that week.
Before interviews began, producer Tony Marion paid tribute to Sheik, and star Sophia Anne Caruso led the company in a performance of “Immured,” one of the songs he wrote for the show.
Winkler and Sheik spent six years adapting Moyoco Anno’s manga of the same name for the stage, a deeply collaborative process that often drew from their own lives. “He was super funny and demanding and really a very generous collaborator,” Winkler says.
Their unusual writing process began with what Sheik called “raw pages.” Before he composed a song, Winkler would write scenes and monologues, pouring her own emotions and experiences onto the page for Sheik to use as inspiration.
“He was so passionate and artistic and he could draw inspiration from things that were extremely raw,” she explains. “If you have even a sad thought or something that you’re mad about, an event of a scene creates sparks within you, ‘I need you to send me those pages.’ ”
Duncan Sheik performing at Carnegie Hall in November 2015Credit: Jack Vartoogian/Getty
Those pages led to hours of conversations between the collaborators, whether on the phone, at Sheik’s home or together at bars and coffee shops.
For “Immured,” a pivotal song about heartbreak that Caruso performed at the press event, Winkler first wrote the scene without music. Then, she says, she put seven of her own painful breakups onto the page for Sheik.
“He would come back to me and talk about his breakups or his heartache, and then he would go away,” Winkler recalls. Eventually, Sheik returned with the song.
Leah Nanako Winkler at a press event for Duncan Sheik’s ‘Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen’Credit: Michaelah Reynolds
The result left Winkler astonished by his ability to take something deeply personal and transform it into something entirely his own.
“It’s just feeling really seen in a song, but also being erased, which is a beautiful feeling,” she says. “I was astonished every time in the way that he morphed something that was totally different into this other thing where I still felt like it had the emotional height of our conversations and my pages.”
Sophia Anne Caruso at a press event for Duncan Sheik’s ‘Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen’Credit: Michaelah Reynolds
Caruso had an equally personal connection to Sheik and the musical. The Beetlejuice alum stars as Colette, a young writer working at a Parisian maison close whose complicated relationship with her childhood love, Léon, becomes part of her journey toward finding her own voice.
The role was one Sheik specifically sought Caruso out to play, beginning a years-long creative process that ultimately shaped Colette around the actress herself. “My early involvement in this production came from Duncan asking me to do it, which I answered yes, of course, not knowing what it was at all actually,” Caruso tells PEOPLE. “I would do whatever Duncan asked of me. I would do anything with him.”
“He had impeccable taste,” she adds. “I knew that anything he was doing was bound to be very good.”
Over the years that followed, Caruso says the character evolved alongside her. “Because we were so collaborative, the role has been shaped around my experiences too and my own sort of growth,” she explains. “So I feel that this role in this show has kind of grown with me.” Pasted markdown
Sophia Anne Caruso in Duncan Sheik’s ‘Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen’Credit: Andy Henderson
Now, as Caruso brings that character before audiences, she says Sheik remains present throughout the musical.
“I think that Duncan can be found everywhere in this piece,” she says. “I think that every character that sings has a piece of him.”
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“These songs he wrote for the characters and for the show, but they are also pieces from his heart and his soul,” she continues. “That’s the type of songwriter that Duncan was. He wasn’t just writing literal things for a character to say. He was writing deep, poetic, philosophical songs.”
Preserving those songs as Sheik left them has become especially important following his death. “I think that this was particularly raw,” Caruso says of the score. “All of these songs are sort of at their rawest. They haven’t been polished or commercialized. They have not been changed because those were his words and we’re not going to change them.”
Cory Jeacoma in Duncan Sheik’s ‘Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen’Credit: Andy Henderson
Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen marks the first Japanese manga to be developed into an American musical in English. Set in early 20th-century Paris, the story follows the women of the Night Egg, where Colette begins chronicling the fantasies and confessions of its clients while discovering her own voice as a writer.
New production photos, shared exclusively with PEOPLE, offer a first look at that world onstage.
Winkler, who was born in Japan and grew up reading manga, says she was drawn to the source material in part because of its empathetic depiction of the women at the center of the story.
“This is not a sad brothel musical,” she says. Instead, she saw a story about “this genius writer finding her artistry” and a chance to invert a familiar trope by making the troubled artist a woman and the male character her muse.
“Why can’t we be the messy artists who make bad decisions and who get engulfed into this toxic relationship with a muse, with a damaged muse, and we make art about it?” Winkler says. “Why can’t that be the girl?”
Cory Jeacoma and Sophia Anne Caruso in Duncan Sheik’s ‘Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen’Credit: Andy Henderson
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The production also marks Caruso’s return to musical theater after spending recent years largely focused on film, television and her own music.
“I wanted to make sure that whatever musical I did, because doing a musical is so taxing, that it really be something that I am deeply, deeply passionate about,” she says. “This is just the one that I wanted to do. This is the one that I felt was worth it for me.”
“And a lot of that had to do with Duncan and him asking me to do it,” she adds.
Sophia Anne Caruso and the company of Duncan Sheik’s ‘Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen’Credit: Michaelah Reynolds
Sheik, who first rose to fame with his 1996 hit “Barely Breathing,” became one of contemporary musical theater’s most influential composers with Spring Awakening. The 2006 Broadway musical, written with Steven Sater, won eight Tony Awards, including best musical and best original score, and launched the careers of stars including Lea Michele, Jonathan Groff and John Gallagher Jr.
His other theatrical work included American Psycho, Alice by Heart and Because of Winn-Dixie. Sheik also continued recording throughout his career, with 2022’s Claptrap marking his most recent solo album.
For Caruso, who had known and worked with Sheik for years, bringing Memoirs to the stage now means allowing audiences to hear something of the man behind that body of work. “If you listen to the words of these songs, even out of context, you’ll experience something very special from him,” she says.
Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen, directed and choreographed by Rob Ashford with a book by Winkler and music and lyrics by Sheik, began performances Sept. 25 at The Night Egg at Culture Club. Opening night is set for Oct. 15, with performances scheduled through Jan. 3, 2027.
The cast also includes Cory Jeacoma as Léon, Nkeki Obi-Melekwe as Nana, Andy Bakun as Sakae and Jenny Powers as Madame, alongside Leanne Antonio, Kailin Brown, Michael Everett, Elsa Keefe, Jaedynn Latter, Austin Lesch, Nika Lindsay, Caleb Marshall, Jessie Peltier, Michael Starr and Thomas Winter.
For the company, the long-awaited premiere now carries a significance no one expected when they began creating it. But as they perform Sheik’s final score, Caruso knows exactly where he can still be found.
“These songs are pieces from his heart and his soul,” she says. “In this theater and through this piece, Duncan very much lives.”
Tickets to Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemenare now on sale.
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