Skylight musical funny, clever
It’s a story about love, passing of time
Here’s a question we don’t ask often enough around Valentine’s Day:
Is everything this greetingcard holiday tells us about romantic love just flat-out wrong? Do we ask way more of marriage and our partners than they can possibly deliver? And is that among the reasons why so many marriages fail?
Not the sort of questions ordinarily prompted by “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” the wildly popular and oft-performed musical confection by Joe DiPietro (book and lyrics) and Jimmy Roberts (music).
But when I wasn’t laughing at what’s often a funny show, they’re among the questions I asked myself while watching the sharp and clever rendition of this chestnut at Skylight Music Theatre, under the stage direction of Pam Kriger (who also choreographs) and the music direction of Jack Forbes Wilson (who also plays piano with exuberant flair from stage).
Structured as a revue, “I Love You” tends to play cute as we move, in roughly chronological order, from couples getting ready for their first date, through courtship, marriage and on to the difficulties involved in raising children — before starting over upon getting divorced or growing old. It can feel like a 1990s update of the musical “I Do! I Do!,” with equally dated gender stereotypes.
But as Kriger has recognized and as the title to this musical itself suggests, there’s more here than one might think. Beneath all the guffaws, this isn’t just a story about love but also a story about time, which continually undermines those idealized moments of love — like Feb. 14 — giving us intimations of immortality.
Hence the disconnect, even as a bride (Kathryn Hausman) and her groom (Doug Clemons) celebrate their wedding, between the pomp and circumstance we see and what these actors sing, of a future that will continually challenge their signature moment as beautiful people.
The frequently paired Karen Estrada and Rick Pendzich round out this cast of four with many more broadly comic moments, during which they confront the gap between the story they’ve been sold and the one they’re actually living: as homely nerds enduring a first date, careworn parents with no time for sex or aged and widowed singletons hooking up in a funeral parlor.
At its best, comedy is always about what’s most serious; so too, here. Estrada is particularly adept at landing the laughs while giving us a sense of the underlying disappointment and loneliness many of these characters sometimes feel.
Rick Rasmussen’s pop-art scenic design and Kristy Leigh Hall’s fabulously over-the-top costumes — emphatically accented by Holly Blomquist’s lighting and Michael Lorenz’s percussion — play as impish parody of oversize dreams about romance. Kriger’s choreography captures our zany, humorous attempts to make those dreams come true.