Iguana Hates Lovemusik

Today I give you a personal and indepth look into my mind and what happens when a piece of theatre that I feel SO strongly about does to my mind. This is an email* I sent to a friend telling him about my reaction to Lovemusik. Something I have mentioned several times...

Love-Mother-Fucking-Musik. It had all the write properties but often in those situations it was ruined. I understand you dislike for Hal Princes staging techniques...OY. OY!! As far as story goes on. In that little video they talk about how they based the novel Speak Low (which I found yesterday at Strand book store cause it's out of print). The entire novel is all about the personal letters sent between Weill and Lenya their entire life together. I was VERY excited to read this book, and hoped that the musical wouldn't spoil anything from it.

Well I'm still excited to read the book because as far as I can tell it has nothing to do with the musical outside of what you can read in the introduction. It's a bio-musical (abridged VERY much) of Weill's life. Disguised as a "love" story between Lenya and Weill. Who for the 1920-1950s their marriage was something VERY strange for the time. It was basically an open relationship. Lenya took lovers and made it well known to Weill. But she was insanely jealous, etc. It's very interesting to know something like that existed during those years long ago.

Too bad this interesting relationship wasn't REALLY even the main point of this "love" musical. It was all about Weill's career. The other book I read about Weill this summer, basically was what they used. Discussing all his major successes. The thing that intruiges me is how Cruel Lenya acted towards Weill the entire show, and YET (this was in the introduction of the Speak Low, so if Alfred Uhry REALLY read it he's want to look into this too...but apparently not) when Lenya died they found 100s of letters that Weill sent her kept basically in perfect condition. She CHERISHED Weill and yet the entire musical Donna played Lenya as this sassy bitch towards him.

As for the actors. Well Michael was good as Weill and basically got ALL The best solo numbers. But in his monotone Weill-ian voice I felt it was wasted. Donna played a good Lenya in my opinion, lots of people in the theater were saying how she came across as annoying. What annoyed me about these people is A LOT of people in our generation know Lenya as the old woman who played a spy in James Bond, with a deep raspy voice. Young Lenya had a VERY nasally voice and was SASSY and rude, etc. Plus her singing voice wasn't trained and was somewhat annoying.

And it's funny how when Leyna came to America she couldn't start a REAL career (thus living in the shadow of Weill until his death and the creation of the American ThreePenny) because of these reasons. She didn't have a typical singing voice and she wasn't the typical 1940s female in looks or manners. So in my opinion Donna did a superb job (because we all know Murphy has an amazing voice so she totally toned it down).

However, she was given no numbers to STAND out. None of her numbers were long enough or given enough emotion to allow her to shine. Her two most powerful numbers were "Alabama Song" and "Surabaya Johnny." I read how her Surabuya Johnny got a standing O the first preview...ummm where? I have heard probably a 1000 versions of that song sung by Patti Lupone, Betty Buckley, Marianne Faithfull, Audra and Lenya herself. And the version written for this show was NOT moving as those versions. I'd have to listen to it again to see if they had cut out whole verse.

The actor who played Brecht (I forget his name, he was in Coast of Utopia) was given WAY to much stage time for a show about Weill and Lenya. He had MORE solos and bigger production numbers than Leyna did! If you can say this poorly funded musical could afford big production numbers. Cause it hardly did! Someone said how Hal used Cabaret like sequences...ummmmm chances are Kander and Ebb used Weill like melodies for Cabaret and that's why it seemed similar. Also they said there was a love land sequence. This sequence was hardly loveland-esque. Well it was, but without any special effects. Once again Weill invented the Concept musical with the musical Love Life. Hal Prince admits to that. So chances are Sondheim STOLE that sequence from Weill in the first place.

Moving alone. Costumes were blah, scenes were loud flats on wheels that made SO much noise moving around stage. It was just one disappointment after the next. What annoyed me about people in the audience is I kept hearing people bringing up, "I saw the ThreePenny Revival last year...it was awful." Like this show had any connection to that show, other than the fact that it was Weill's masterpiece. Just cause you know Threepenny Opera, DOESN'T mean you know Weill!! That's what I wanted to yell at people, but since the show had so many other weaknesses it wasn't worth defending.

So I'll stop now because I'll pass out. I just needed to get that all out lol. Cause that's how I felt about the musical. It's hard when something you love so much is ruined so easily.

*Please excuse the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, I was SO worked up I didn't care.