Review: There’s a Crack on the Side of Signature’s In Clay
Despite a first-rate jazz score, the musical’s strict reliance on the biography of French ceramicist Marie-Berthe Cazin stiffens the show.
By D.R. Lewis
December 22, 2025
This review originally appeared in Washington City Paper.
It begins with a baseball-size lump of gray clay, which she unwraps from a piece of damp cloth so quickly that it takes an extra moment to realize what she’s holding. Then it’s on the wheel, spinning ceaselessly as she dips her hand into a rusty pail and shovels water onto the ball with her palm. More spinning, her hand flattening the mass, then more water, and her thumbs push up the side of the soft slab until it’s tall. The music is swelling now, unfazed by another splash, and her thumbs rotate, pressing down to form a well in the center. The music is still driving, but the wheel has stopped and she’s pulled a wire taut—another sleight of hand—and scrapes it against the flat base, releasing the perfect pot into her hand. She’s standing now, depositing it into the kiln, letting hours pass in a few breaths until the clay is finally cool and she can lift it high like a divine tribute, ignorant of the deep crack only the audience sees. She notices and she sighs.
So goes an unforgettable pas de deux (pot de deux?) between real-life artist Marie–Berthe Cazin (Alex Finke) and her creation in the new musical In Clay, making its U.S. premiere at Arlington’s Signature Theatre through Feb. 1 under director Kimberly Senior.
If you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of Cazin (and I bet you haven’t heard of her), it’s not really your fault. The wife of another artist, Jean–Michel Cazin, much of her work was credited to him, an error that only began to be corrected in the years after his death in the first World War. During In Clay, Marie-Berthe, a childhood pal of the more famous Henriette Tirman, frantically prepares for her estranged friend’s arrival. An exhibition of women artists Tirman is curating triggers an identity crisis of sorts for Cazin and our own 100-minute walk down memory lane.
Cazin’s obscurity was as much the impetus for In Clay—which features a book by Rebecca Simmonds, music by Jack Miles, and lyrics from both of them—as her talent, according to a program note. Miles was listening to a French jazz musician when he envisioned a woman at a pottery wheel making a piece of art in time with the tune, setting off a search for underappreciated ceramicists that led him to Cazin.
That the music came first is instantly apparent. Miles’ score soars above the vast majority of new musicals local stages have seen in the past several years. Drawing on jazz manouche, it is remarkable what he’s done with only a piano, upright bass, violin, and guitar at his disposal (kudos also to music supervisor Matt Herbert, who lent orchestrations and arrangements), fashioning a score that is uniquely dramatic, but also not a watered-down derivative of a distinctive style. In Clay unfolds on a richly decorated set (by scenic designer Tony Cisek), but the score does most of the lifting in conjuring a sense of place within the walls of Cazin’s atelier (lighting designer Colin K. Bills also does great work, particularly with a row of skylights). The band comes through strongly, but Eric Norris’ sound design never allows Miles and Simmonds’ romantic lyrics, which perfectly pair with the tunes to which they’re matched, to drown under the weight of the instruments. Among the best songs are “Two,” a meditation on adolescent friendship between two budding artists, and “Love and Work,” which sees Cazin falling in love with the less talented son of her teacher against Tirman’s advice. Vivid and affecting, witty and truthful, In Clay is ready for a cast album.
But even Cazin’s perfect pot had a crack; in her musical it manifests in the book, where the fractures cannot be so easily addressed with a bit of lacquer. Though the story of artists’ work being credited to others isn’t especially common, it is still ground that has been covered on larger scales. Films like Big Eyes, based on painter Margaret Keane, and The Wife, a Glenn Close vehicle based on Meg Wolitzer’s novel of the same name, see less talented husbands slap their names on their visionary wives’ work, facing varying degrees of exposure and public humiliation. But the stakes of those stories are exponentially higher than in In Clay, and their results are, predictably, more dramatic. Having Cazin contend only with herself here is bad for audience attention; the vast majority of connective tissue between the songs is expository, as she recounts her education, marriage, and career with a series of mostly mundane vignettes. She voices other characters, but her most thrilling interaction is with the clay.
Like any writers taking on historic characters who are not widely known, Simmonds and Miles had a choice to make. They could either confidently flout the individual’s biography or adhere to the parameters of a life (Cazin lived to be 98, though we meet her in her 40s) most rigidly. The creators of In Clay try to have it both ways, and the results are uneven. When they choose feelings, namely in the score, they succeed hugely. When they prioritize facts, which is most of the book, the story begins to drag almost instantaneously.
As gauche as it may be to say, perhaps part of the reason the public is not familiar with Cazin’s life is that its twists and turns weren’t particularly dramatically compelling (In Clay begins almost exactly where it ends). Artist stories are favorite material for writers, who can find fertile ground in the agony of creation. But there has to be something more to transform an artist to a character. Consider Frida Kahlo, who is as much a fixture of public fascination because of her pain, her relationships, and her politics as her singular artistic vision. Or take Georges Seurat, whose painting of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is the springboard for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Stephen Sondheim–James Lapine musical Sunday in the Park With George. Lapine and Sondheim created a girlfriend, daughter, and grandchild for Seurat, who died at 31, then extrapolated the unyielding pressure of artmaking across a century of time and technology.
Without a doubt, Simmonds has tried to dramatize the scant facts about Cazin’s life—that she belonged to a network of artists who enjoyed more success than her, that her body of great art was robbed of her name, and that she loved a man who wronged her, and that his death began a journey of reclaiming her identity—as an exercise in respectful tribute. But the history lesson model, no matter how noble, does not rise to the emotional power of the songs she also wrote with Miles, and the experience of watching In Clay feels like a series of jumps and drops. If there were another actor or two to propel those sequences, it may be different, but it’s hard now to shake the sense that In Clay is a score in search of a story.
Under Senior’s deft direction, Finke powers through nevertheless, delivering a 100-minute solo turn that is as commanding as any I’ve seen on a local stage this year. Bravely employing a French accent, she finds the rare middle between committed evocation and cheesiness. That control extends to her voice, too, which is a perfect match for Miles and Simmonds’ lilting score. You can see Finke’s body move instinctively with the melody, and when the book dips too proudly into heavy-handedness (“Cazin’s work speaks quietly but powerfully, reminding us that mastery can reside not in grandeur, but in grace”), her graceful earnestness softens the blow.
It’s not for this critic, or anyone, to tell an artist when a work is complete or not. Even cracked pots are works of beauty as Cazin reminds us in the finale, “What’s in Between.” But I do wonder if just a little more molding, or a different glaze, might truly make In Clay the kind of work that’s impossible to ignore.
In Clay, with book and lyrics by Rebecca Simmonds, music and lyrics by Jack Miles, and directed by Kimberly Senior, runs through Feb. 1 at Signature Theatre. sigtheatre.org. $47–$100.
Alex Finke (Marie-Berthe Cazin) in In Clay at Signature Theatre. Photo by DJ Corey Photography