Love Life (musical)
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2025 Leeds, England
2025 Off-Broadway
| Love Life | |
|---|---|
| Music | Kurt Weill |
| Lyrics | Alan Jay Lerner |
| Book | Alan Jay Lerner |
| Productions | 1948 Broadway 2025 Leeds, England 2025 Off-Broadway |
Love Life is a musical written by Kurt Weill (music) and Alan Jay Lerner (book and lyrics).
The musical opened at the 46th Street Theatre on Broadway (now the Richard Rodgers) on October 7, 1948, and closed on May 14, 1949, after having played 252 performances. The original production starred Ray Middleton and Nanette Fabray, was directed by Elia Kazan, and choreographed by Michael Kidd.[1] Fabray won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her performance.
The show told the story of a married couple, Sam and Susan Cooper, who never age as they progress from 1791 to 1948, encountering difficulties in their marriage (and thus the very fabric of marriage) as they struggle to cope with changing social mores. One of the earliest examples of the concept musical, the action of Love Life was interspersed with vaudeville-style numbers that commented on the story, in a way very similar to Cabaret (which opened in 1966).
Revivals
In 2017 Love Life was staged at Theater Freiburg using a German-language translation of Lerner's libretto by Rüdiger Bering. His translation was approved of by the Kurt Weill Foundation and was praised for successfully "striking a tone reminiscent of the great song and operetta lyricists of the German and Viennese interwar years, such as Marcellus Schiffer and Fritz Löhner-Beda".[2]
The show was revived twice in 2025, by Opera North in Leeds, UK (the show's UK premiere and first UK recording), with a cast headed by Quirijn de Lang and Stephanie Corley,[3] and by New York City Center in 2025 as part of their Encores! series starring Kate Baldwin and Brian Stokes Mitchell.[4]
Influence
Critic Norman Lebrecht has called the piece "foundational" for Stephen Sondheim. "There is no Company or Merrily or Pacific Overtures without it".[5]
Original cast and characters
| Character | Broadway (1948)[6] |
|---|---|
| Susan Cooper | Nanette Fabray |
| Sam Cooper | Ray Middleton |
| Elizabeth Cooper | Cheryl Archer |
| Johnny Cooper | Johnny Stewart |
