I’ve only been sitting with Baz Luhrmann for five minutes when he gets the idea for a performance. The script? A monologue, written by him, about the mysterious fictional haunt of a man named Monsieur. The stage? His new East Village bar, still under construction, named—you guessed it—Monsieur. The actor? Jon Neidich, CEO of Golden Age Hospitality and his business partner. And action!
“Tucked inside the medieval lair of its namesake, this bar once belonged to a part-time poet and full-time enfant terrible who was a fixture of the East Village party scene back in the late ’60s and early ’70s, known only as Monsieur,” Neidich begins slowly. “He was a fabulous trickster, a man who made fiction feel more truthful than fact, and always looked like he just stepped out of his own self-portrait, accompanied by his beloved pet chimp and co-conspirator, Thibault.”
Then, he picks up the pace. “Their soireés were the stuff of legend, a place where no one belonged, where you could rub shoulders with the beautiful, the damned, and the doomed. As the two moved through the scenes like a pair of tragic jesters, delighting the wide-eyed and annoying the cynics. Even now, you can almost hear their laughter, faith, but insistent, like a record stuck on the best part of the song.”
Luhrmann smiles as Neidich finishes. “That’s our character—that’s Monsieur!” he adds.
