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    Review: Long-Lost ‘Love Life’ Still Has a Lot to Say About America

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    Brian Stokes Mitchell, Kate Baldwin and other top-shelf singers star in an overly sentimental production of the long-lost Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner show.In recent years, Encores! has presented productions of musicals with good name recognition, including “Into the Woods,” “Titanic” and “Urinetown.” With its latest offering, “Love Life,” the series returns to its original mission statement by presenting an obscure show, one devoid of standards at that — nothing in it would start a singalong at even the most hard-core piano bar.Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner’s musical opened on Broadway in 1948, ran for 252 performances and over the years has developed a cult following largely thanks to its daring storytelling. It touched on what constitutes the fabric of American life and integrated vaudevillian interludes, thus paving the way for the likes of “Cabaret” and “Chicago.”Yet the show has been absent from New York stages in the intervening decades. There wasn’t even an original cast recording to help popularize the score. There is grainy footage of one of its original stars, Nanette Fabray, performing “Green-Up Time” on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and some numbers have popped up on various albums, like Bryn Terfel’s cover of “Here I’ll Stay.” But for the most part, “Love Life” is fairly unknown these days.Naturally, this made it a desirable target for Encores!, which is presenting a semi-staged production through Sunday at New York City Center.As directed by Victoria Clark, this “Love Life” gives us only glimpses of the musical’s potential. The vocals are top-shelf, with particularly thrilling ensemble singing and harmonies, especially on “Susan’s Dream,” which almost gets within reach of the Encores! high-water mark of “Sing for Your Supper” in its 1997 production of “The Boys From Syracuse.” (Rob Berman conducts the onstage orchestra.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Love Life,’ the Lost Great American Musical, Returns Over 75 Years Later

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      Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner’s pioneering “Love Life” was thwarted by circumstance. Now, it is coming to Encores! at New York City Center.For some people, seeing the musical “Love Life” in 1948 was an eye-opening experience.As a new show with music by Kurt Weill, and a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, it was a major Broadway event. So Stephen Sondheim got himself a ticket, as did his future collaborator Hal Prince. One night Fred Ebb, of Kander and Ebb, was in the house; another night, Bob Fosse.All of them would be influenced by “Love Life,” which tells the story of an American marriage over 150 years through a series of vaudeville acts. It’s by no means a classic, but its form pioneered the concept musical, a genre that would blossom a generation later in shows like Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret” and “Chicago,” and Sondheim’s “Company” and “Follies.”Ebb would look back on “Love Life” as “a marvelous piece of theater.” Yet it hasn’t been seen in New York since that original run. Because of a musicians’ union strike, it was never recorded, nor was it published. Some songs lived on, but eventually it gained a reputation as the lost great American musical.The 1948 production (with Nanette Fabray, center) was inspired, in part, by Alan Jay Lerner, who was recently divorced and interested in writing “a cavalcade of American marriage.”Billy Rose Theater Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsThat is about to change. “Love Life” is finally returning to Manhattan on Wednesday, after decades of neglect and a five-year pandemic delay, for an Encores! production at New York City Center, directed by Victoria Clark and starring Kate Baldwin and Brian Stokes Mitchell.“It’s always seemed that ‘Love Life’ was jinxed,” said the scholar Kim Kowalke, who runs the Kurt Weill Foundation. “Maybe the jinx is off now.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More