Love Life (New York City Center Encores!)

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Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner were titans of the American Musical Theater.  They combined their talents only once in a surprisingly original take on America, marriage, entertainment and history:  Love Life, subtitled A Vaudeville in Two Parts in 1948. Revived at the New York City Center as part of its Encores! series, it’s a flawed, but fascinating work of musical theater, considered an early concept musical.

Weill (music), who escaped Nazi Germany, didn’t just adapt to the United States music scene, but conquered it with such musicals as Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), Lady in the Dark (1941), Street Scene (1947) and Lost in the Stars (1949). Lerner (book and lyrics), a native New Yorker, had already found his ideal partner in Frederick Loewe (The Day Before Spring, 1943 and Brigadoon, 1947), but was hoping his alliance with the venerable Weill would result in a new, vital form of musical theater.

According to a pre-opening article in the New York Times, Love Life was attended by future pillars of musical theater Bob Fosse, Stephen Sondheim, Hal Prince and Fred Ebb, such was the magnetic pull of this creative team.

Does it hold up?  Did it influence future musicals?  Did Encores! do it justice?

No, Love Life doesn’t hold up, but must have been intriguing to 1948 audiences to whom Oklahoma! was the new standard.  Yes, there are moments that clearly reverberated with and inspired those young theater artists. And, most certainly Encores! provided this musical a first class cast and a fine guest music director Rob Berman who made the original Weill arrangements soar conducting The Encores! Orchestra.

Love Life does have a precedent or two.  Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth used a similar time travel theme and, of course Vaudeville and the art of the—sadly now defunct—revue in which disconnected acts filled an evening is a format this musical copies.

Love Life takes its main characters, the Cooper family, from 1791 to 1948 in fifty-year steps, the family never aging, but subject to the culture and economics of each period. In 1791, the carpenter/furniture creator Samuel Cooper (Brian Stokes Mitchell) moves his family to a small New England town where his artistry will stand out. His wife Susan (Kate Baldwin) adapts along with their son and daughter, Johnny and Elizabeth (two superb child actors, Christopher Jordan and Andrea Rosa Guzman).

Between the family history surfing sections, called Sketches, are Acts, Vaudeville type entertainments. The show opened with Johnny and Elizabeth performing a sequin-steeped magic show, bringing their parents up from the audience to be chopped in half and levitated.

Each Act, although doubling as glitzy entertainment, obliquely commented on the Coopers’ adventures. (Think “Losing My Mind” from Follies.)

As the Coopers settle into their new home in Mayville in 1791, they are welcomed so warmly that Sam and Susan sing the moving “Here I’ll Stay,” probably the only well-known song of the many written for this epic.

This is followed by the second Act, a lively, colorful eight-man chorus singing the sardonic “Progress,” succeeded by “Economics,” “The Common Cents Quartet,” “Love Song,” and by the sad “His & Hers, A Divorce Ballet.”

The songs for the Acts tended towards clever pastiche from the razzamatazz of the magic act and the “Progress” ditty.  They even used musical references to other Weill plays such as “Is It Him or Is It Me’ (Lady in the Dark), “Radio Night” (Street Scene) and “Susan’s Dream” (Lady In the Dark).  The inclusion of the “Divorce Ballet” is a clear homage to Agnes De Mille’s integrated ballets in Oklahoma! and Brigadoon.

There is even a comic song “I Remember It Well,” recycled in 1958 with new music by Loewe in the lovely film Gigi.  The score is not particularly memorable but is clearly the work of Weill uniting his music to Lerner’s mostly pedestrian lyrics.

The glitzy costumes for the Acts and the period-sensitive outfits for the Coopers’ adventures were by Tracy Christensen and the flexible set that went smoothly from the Coopers troubled domesticity to the entertaining Acts was designed by Ryan Howell; the lights by Paul Miller had his usual panache.

Although the robust choreography of Joann M. Hunter was beautifully executed by the talented cast, it needed more specificity, more individualist details.

This also plagued Lerner’s book for Love Life.  The Coopers are a very boring family, even when domestic turmoil divides them as they reach 1948.  They are not written as full-bodied people although Brian Stokes Mitchell and Kate Baldwin were spectacular, singing, dancing and acting like the stars they are.  But even they couldn’t make the characters three dimensional.

The production was directed by another theater titan, Victoria Clark, who managed to pull all the disparate parts together, making judicious cuts and inspiring the cast to serve Weill and Lerner with enthusiasm.  This is another facet of this Tony Award-winning artist.

This production of Love Life marked a return to Encores! original ideals, reviving musicals that have been ignored or even forgotten. However, it is unlikely for Love Life to move to Broadway as have a few of Encores!’ other recent productions—Parade, Chicago—because it doesn’t have the commercial pizzazz of the others.

It has been wonderful to witness this bit of theatrical history.    

Love Life (through March 30, 2025)

New York City Center, 131 West 55^th Street, in Manhattan

For ticket, call 212-581-1212 or visit http://www.NYCityCenter.org

Running time:  two hours and 50 minutes including one intermission