The curtain rises on a magic show. A woman is sawn in half, and a man is suspended in mid-air when his chair disappears. Left alone on stage by the magician, their conversation reveals the pair are married to one another – and have been for the past 157 years.
Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner’s Love Life was a “concept” musical avant la lettre: a time-hopping pageant of vignettes in which, at intervals throughout their eternal marriage, Sam and Susan Cooper renegotiate their relationship in the face of each era’s modern concerns – framed by musical commentary from an assortment of vaudeville acts. “Good economics … awfully bad for love” intones a barbershop quartet before Sam insists on scheduling a potential third child around his business trips. Susan’s foray into first-wave feminism, meanwhile, is heralded by a trio of Shirley Temple-like Tots singing about their mothers’ neuroses.
Matthew Eberhardt’s production, with designs by Zahra Mansouri, perhaps wisely opts for relative minimalism. Against a set consisting largely of steel girders and risers, including a bandstand for the orchestra, Sam and Susan remain in the same timeless black outfits throughout, in contrast to gilded theatrical detail for the vaudevillians.
Love Life boasts close to 60 smaller and ensemble roles, many cast here from Opera North’s chorus, revelling in various configurations as madrigal singers, magicians’ assistants and more. There are charismatic turns, too, from baritone Themba Mvula as the snakily charming Magician/Con Man, bass-baritone Justin Hopkins as the Hobo, and dancers Holly Saw and Max Westwell, whose Divorce Ballet, choreographed by Will Tuckett, seems to leap straight out of Hollywood’s golden age.
Inevitably, it is Sam and Susan themselves who dominate, each gaining in emotional intelligence and musical depth with every encounter. Quirijn de Lang cuts a sardonic figure as Sam, his sinewy baritone impressing in songs whose titles speak of self-satisfaction (Here I’ll Stay, This Is the Life) while their content grows ever more agitated. As Susan, a vocally indisposed Stephanie Corley acts with warmth and slow-building grit, teamed with standout singing from her cover, chorus member Katie Sharpe, who is deservedly placed in the spotlight for her electrifying number Mr Right.
Conducted by James Holmes, a Weill specialist, the Orchestra of Opera North zips through the show’s genre-shifting score with flair, particularly when the advent of the Roaring 20s allows them to show off their jazz stylings.
Productions of Love Life have been rare since its premiere, but this one fortunately won’t be lost to posterity: in collaboration with the Kurt Weill Foundation, it will form the basis of a cast album recording – the first ever made of this surreal but (in every sense) timely piece of musical theatre history.
Source link