NEW YORK — Following a preview of "LoveMusik," Joel Grey approached the legendary director Harold Prince, who staged the new Broadway musical. "Hal, I love this show," said the actor who starred in Prince's original Broadway production of "Cabaret." "But what exactly is it?"
Grey is not alone in puzzling over the intimate musical, which opens Thursday. Preview audiences have not quite known what to make of the show, which circumambulates through the bohemian marriage of Kurt Weill, the German-born composer best known for "The Threepenny Opera," and his muse, Lotte Lenya, who starred in that classic. The style of "LoveMusik," dotted with numbers from Weill's eclectic songbook, incorporates elements of German expressionism, vaudeville, '40s musicals and torch-song cabaret. The shifting tone reflects the permutations of a couple who loved as large as they lived, reinventing themselves during the turbulent '30s and '40s as they moved from Europe to America.
Prince professes to be delighted with Grey's response. "There's a moment I love a lot, common to a bunch of shows that I've done, where I say, 'I'm flying a little blind here,' " says the director, sitting in his book-lined office at Rockefeller Center, surrounded by mementos of a nearly six-decade theatrical career that has brought him a record 21 Tony Awards. "Don't ask me to describe why this is shaped that way or how that got shaped that way. I can't explain it. But I do know that it's unsettling in the best possible way."
Emotional center
At 79 and rich as Croesus thanks to his phenomenal "Phantom of the Opera," Prince is still boyishly enthusiastic about advancing the musical form -- the prevailing ambition of his life and career since his breakthrough as a director in 1966's "Cabaret." That followed his early start as a producing wunderkind behind such hits as "Damn Yankees!" and "West Side Story." His experimental daring culminated with a string of landmark musicals in the '70s with Stephen Sondheim that included "Company," "Follies," "A Little Night Music," "Sweeney Todd" and "Pacific Overtures."
Prince's profile has dimmed of late, however, following the failure of his 2003 reunion with Sondheim on the musical "Bounce," which had generated high expectations because of its pedigree. Heightened curiosity swirls around "LoveMusik," as well, with its book by Alfred Uhry ("Driving Miss Daisy") and cast led by Michael Cerveris and Donna Murphy.
