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The music is lean, balancing pop’s go-for-the-throat emoting with showier stage exposition, guitar-driven soft-rock passages and laptop electronica that sounds like Trent Reznor if he was weaned on Sondheim.

Ms. Love, looking trim and intense, her long blond hair caught in a tangled ponytail, portrays the onetime love of a dream-bound musician in Mr. Almond’s dramatically blurry but musically inviting work…

Courtney Love, the onetime front woman of the grunge-rock group Hole, widow of Kurt Cobain and she of the often tattered image, is still pushing boundaries. This time though, they’re all her own. 

Courtney Love is captivating. Even in her rather small role in “Kansas City Choirboy,” there is not a moment that you are not compelled to watch her.

Love stayed within bounds and rather wrenchingly portrayed the late girlfriend of the unnamed singer-musician played by the younger Almond.

Todd Almond backs a subdued Courtney Love in “Kansas City Choir Boy” at Oberon.

EDGE speaks to Mr. Almond from his Brooklyn home about the show, its origin and working with Ms. Love.

Love is charismatic. She moves with a sultry swagger and her chemistry with Almond is apparent.

Todd’s stuff is very difficult for me. There’s a lot of pausing, and as he told me, the sex is in the pause. I had to learn that patience and enjoy it. It’s not second nature to me like four-to-the-floor rock is. But it’s new, which is exciting to me.