Theatre Review: I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change

Christopher Alan Gray, Dean Hollin, Leslie Kay, Alison O’Neill play various roles in I Love You

Have you ever wanted to jump ahead to the third date just to get the awkwardness out of the way? What about the sixth date or the day you realize you’re not right for each or perhaps two years down the road when you meet on a sidewalk and evaluate each other’s new lovers. So begins the first vignettes of this hilarious 12 year running Off-Broadway musical.

Created by Joe DiPietro with music by Jimmy Roberts, this play takes you on a hilarious journey of the development of relationships. The play’s tagline is “Everything you have ever secretly thought about dating, romance, marriage, lovers, husbands, wives and in-laws, but were afraid to admit.” And, that’s exactly what the audience experiences. What’s really well done with this play is that beyond the overall theme, the vignettes follow a timeline. The scenes discuss dating before they look at marriage and in-laws, divorce and death, so even though each scene is a separate story with separate characters the overall show portrays a full (mating) life cycle.

The cast of four, Christopher Alan Gray, Dean Hollin, Leslie Kay, Alison O’Neill have no easy time changing characters between scenes and rearranging the stage but pulls it off flawlessly. Two men and two women engage the audience through song and witty banter. It was a great pairing of voices, which allowed the musical numbers to have a different tone and feel for each vignette performed.

The production is part of the current season of Angelwalk Theatre. Angelwalk Theatre is a not-for-profit professional theatre company dedicated to producing ‘off-Broadway’ musical theatre and providing opportunities for both emerging and established Canadian theatre professionals.