All you need to know about Kurt Weill’s time-travelling American musical — right here!
Love Life is a one of the very first concept musicals — the action, broken into scenes or ‘sketches’, is punctuated by cabaret-style numbers or ‘acts’ that comment on the story.
In fact, its subtitle is ‘A vaudeville’…
Vaudeville began in France, but became hugely popular in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a form of variety show (a bit like music hall in Victorian Britain). It could include musical numbers, circus routines, magic shows, dramatic sketches and even movies!
“Vaudeville was one of the most democratic of art forms. Anyone could do it. It was basically an art for the people” — conductor Jim Holmes.
Love Life is about the marriage of Sam and Susan Cooper. It opens in the year 1791 and travels through time, ending in 1948. BUT Sam and Susan never age, instead we see how their relationship is affected by the different pressures of each era.
In 1791, Sam has just moved to a rural New England town with his wife and two children to open a furniture store. Blissful, they want to stay there forever. A smug male octet revel in the power of economic growth over love. Cut to the midst of the industrial revolution in 1821, and Sam has decided to drop the small-town dream and take a job at the factory. A male quartet regale us with anecdotes about how money always trumps romance.
At the climax of the show, the neat division between the family’s scenes and the vaudeville acts, between reality and illusion, breaks down…
Poster for the original Broadway run of Love Life, 1948
Love Life has a large cast of characters, but just four who travel through time:
Sam Cooper
Susan Cooper — his wife
Elizabeth Cooper — their daughter
Johnny Cooper — their son
Members of the Chorus of Opera North take roles in the Cooper family scenes, as well as forming many of the vaudeville acts – including a madrigal group! They’re joined by a quartet of music theatre performers, a pair of dancers, children and more…
Love Life is “one of Weill’s best scores” (conductor Jim Holmes). It’s a masterpiece of putting different musical styles together, “a compendium of American musical idioms, cunningly chosen so that they suit the dramatic material”.
In 1791, we hear waltzes, polkas and more ‘traditional’ music, but as time moves forward, swing takes a starring role. By 1894, Susan is campaigning at a suffragettes’ meeting, and we get ‘Women’s Club Blues’ with a dance break in boogie-woogie style! So as Susan starts pushing societal boundaries, the music develops with her.
Some of the numbers are now cabaret standards in their own right, like ‘Here I’ll Stay’ and the moving ‘Love Song’ — sung by the wise down-and-out, a familiar vaudeville trope: “it’s the heart of the piece” (director Matthew Eberhardt).
This new staging for Leeds Grand Theatre places Love Life’s orchestra in full view on a rostrum at the back of the stage!
The Cooper family scenes will be performed in simple black clothes, showing the timelessness of the themes they explore. The vaudeville acts will have colourful costumes, designed by Zahra Mansouri, and will draw on historical references from the early 1900s to represent a wonderfully varied (and very satirical) theatrical world.
Look out for some real magic tricks — the show opens with an illusionist who levitates Sam and saws Susan in half, metaphors for their lives. “Illusion is a really important part of this piece” (director Matthew Eberhardt). Is the American dream an illusion? Is lasting love? At the end, Sam and Susan have to decide, as part of a spectacular minstrel show…
Love Life’s music is by German-Jewish composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950). Weill had a lot of success in Germany in the 1920s, most famously with Bertolt Brecht (like The Threepenny Opera). But forced to flee the Nazis, Weill landed in New York in 1935 and set out to conquer Broadway.
Book and lyrics are by Alan Jay Lerner (1919-1986) of Lerner and Loewe (My Fair Lady, Camelot, Gigi and more).
The pair teamed up in 1947, both riding high on recent successes (Street Scene for Weill, Brigadoon for Lerner) and looking for new projects. When Love Life premiered on Broadway in 1948, Weill called it “an entirely new form of theatre.”
Alan Jay Lerner and Kurt Weill
Love Life is sung in English with English titles and last approximately 3 hours, including one interval.
