Exactly five years ago, in March 2020, City Center was scheduled to present the first-ever New York revival of Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner’s historic but little-known 1948 musical “Love Life” as part of its Encores! season, with Brian Stokes Mitchell and Kate Baldwin leading the cast, and direction by actress Victoria Clark. As you may have guessed, “Love Life” got indefinitely postponed when, six days before its opening night, Broadway and the rest of New York theater shut down as the realities and dangers of COVID-19 began to take shape.
When the Encores! season restarted two years later in 2022, “Love Life” was not included as part of the season, leading many to wonder whether the production was being postponed because Clark (who had just appeared in the original Off-Broadway incarnation of the musical “Kimberly Akimbo”) was busy or if “Love Life” – a particularly daring and difficult title for even the Encores! series to attempt – would go unseen for another 75 years.
Luckily for devoted musical theater history nerds such as myself, the Encores! series (which has been producing more contemporary fare since reopening after the pandemic) is finally presenting “Love Life,” perhaps because Clark is finally free after appearing in “Kimberly Akimbo” on Broadway for more than a year. Even better, Mitchell and Baldwin have returned to the cast as the principal married couple of Sam and Susan Cooper. Nicholas Christopher, who was originally slated to take over as Sam Cooper, exited the production in early March due to “personal conflicts,” leaving Mitchell to swoop in at the last minute and save the day.
Viewed today, “Love Life” is a fascinating, challenging, clunky, sweeping, abstract, and bizarre work. It is the sort of musical that deserves a new listen with a full orchestra and talented cast, but not the time and expense of a full Broadway revival, which makes it one of the most ideal selections for the Encores! series in its approximately 30-year history, along with similar works that are tied to history and not exactly timeless, such as (to name a few comparable titles) “Fiorello!,” “Call Me Madam,” “Allegro,” and “The Golden Apple” – not to mention “One Touch of Venus” and “Lost in the Stars,” two other 1940s musicals composed by Weill which were previously produced at City Center.
What made “Love Life” especially obscure (and unlikely to receive new productions even by regional theater companies or colleges) was that it did not receive an original cast album due to a musicians’ strike at the time it premiered. However, as Ethan Mordden and other musical theater historians would tell us, “Love Life” was an early “concept musical,” a work in which traditional storytelling was subverted with non-integrated devices that were intended to comment upon the narrative, as later seen in works such as Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret” and “Chicago” and Sondheim’s “Company.” (John Kander now 98, was in attendance on opening night of “Love Life.”)
With a setup that recalls Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” “Love Life” depicts Sam and Susan Cooper and their children in America from the late 18th century through the late 1940s, tying changes in their lives to changes in the American way of life and economy. All the while, the parents and children never age. Sam, originally a carpenter with a furniture store, becomes a factory foreman, then a railroad manager, then a hotshot businessman, and is last seen unemployed while Susan reenters the workforce. Over time, Sam and Susan experience strains, finally leading to their divorce. In an attempt to add clarity to the musical’s unusual setup, it is now narrated by their children who lead the show-within-a-show presentation of their lives.
The first half of the Encores! production is unwieldy but terrific, with the lush romantic duets “Here I’ll Stay” and “I Remember It Well” (which was later repurposed by Lerner in the movie musical “Gigi”) interposed against the comic commentary of “Progress” and “Economics” and operetta-style sung conversations involving the full cast. Mitchell, one of Broadway’s most vital leading men since “Ragtime,” sings beautifully and brings an everyman persona to the role, while Baldwin is bright and vocally pristine. All the while, the large orchestra (conducted by Rob Berman) sounds glorious.
The second act, which is set solely in 1948, contains two strong character songs, “This Is the Life” for Sam and “Mr. Right” for Susan, but is comparatively empty compared to the time-shifting first act. If someone were to try to revise “Love Life,” the second act could easily be trimmed down to 15 minutes, leaving it short enough to be performed without an intermission.
Normally, one would insist that the Encores! production be recorded so that “Love Life” could conceive the cast album that has eluded it since 1948. However, in an unusual turn of events, a different recent production of the musical by Opera North of Leeds was just recorded for an upcoming release, though I doubt anyone would object if the estates of Weill and Lerner wished to subsidize a cast album of this production too.
The Encores! series has achieved a lot of success since reopening after the pandemic by venturing into more recent musicals such as “The Light in the Piazza,” “Into the Woods,” and “Titanic,” in addition to City Center’s gala presentations of “Ragtime” and “Parade.” However, one hopes that the series will continue to unearth precious gems from the golden age such as “Love Life.”
“Love Life” runs through Sunday at City Center. nycitycenter.org.
