Which they are, of course, but not in a conventional way. After that setup, the show travels to 1791 then moves forward in time in a series of scenes set in various eras. In 1894, for example, Susan is involved in a feminist group and leads the barnstorming “Women’s Club Blues,” whose music builds from rumbling vamps to explosive boogie-woogie. Unfortunately JoAnn M. Hunter’s perfunctory choreography does not lift the number into showstopping territory.
The years and even decades may be passing, but the four Coopers never age, like the nicest singing, dancing vampires ever. Sam holds different jobs and Susan starts working outside the home. They become progressively embittered with life, with each other, with the gendered roles they are stuck in.
That alone would set “Love Life” apart from its contemporaries, but Lerner and Weill upped the ante by interpolating the Coopers’ story with numbers that comment on the action by borrowing from vaudeville tropes. They are performed in front of a curtain, as often happened in that genre, and one centers on the traditional vaudevillian figure of a hobo (John Edwards, in stunning vocal form in the torchy solo “Love Song”).
Act II dumps the guardrails and turns fascinatingly odd — which is saying something for a show that is, after all, about a seemingly immortal family standing as a metaphor for an increasingly fractured America where moving forward does not necessarily translate as an improvement for everybody.
It all peaks with a fantasy suite of distinct vignettes led by an M.C. (Edwards again) in an effort to reunite the estranged Sam and Susan. The original version was done as a minstrel performance, but at Encores! it is retooled as a magic fantasy, “The Love Life Illusion Show.” Among the indications that the timeline here extends beyond 1948 is that the “Madame Zuzu” segment’s Miss Horoscope (Nicole Fernandez-Coffaro) and Miss Mysticism (Ta’Nika Gibson) are, according to the revised script, “dressed as New Age influencers” — which the costume designer Tracy Christensen seems to have interpreted as 1960s hippies. By that point I had stopped trying to make sense of it all, and just let the voices carry me.
If anything, this production will hopefully encourage others to take a stab at “Love Life.” A better staging may be on the horizon — and perhaps that, too, is a metaphor for America.
Love Life
Through March 30 at New York City Center, Manhattan; nycitycenter.org. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes.
