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‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change’ Filmed at London Coliseum: A Great Example of How to Film a Stage Show

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It’s Theatre Thursday! Well last night was, for the press night of the new filmed theatrical production of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, from Lambert Jackson Productions and the London Coliseum, available to watch for this weekend.

The new filmed stage production of Joe DiPietro & Jimmy Roberts’ musical I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, directed by Kirk Jameson, is the rare streamed production of the past year that made the most of its dual status as both a stage show and a film. It still felt stagey, with all the raw edges and intimate casualness of theatre, but made the most of being pre-filmed, with quick changes between settings, costumes, and characters amplifying the short vignette style of the show. The style let each scene feel like a unique story despite only using the four actors the show calls for.

I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change (that’s the last time I’ll type that whole title out) is the 1997 Off-Broadway musical consisting of vignettes – mostly very funny, some sad – about love and relationships. From dating to marriage to widowhood, the musical shared insights into universally felt moments of hilarious cringe from the dating scene as well as semi-poignant thoughts about long-term relationships, in a way that audiences heavily related to, at least in the ’90s. Some parts are dated, from the opening number’s line about Sweet’N Low and Half & Half (I swear tg I have not heard about Sweet’N Low since my dad stopped stealing them in bulk from the deli in the year 1999), to the entire scene with the divorcee making her video for the old VHS dating services (which I had to explain the existence of to my husband, my knowledge of course coming from that one episode of Full House where Joey makes one in the basement). This production modernizes other parts, as recent productions have, inserting necessary lines about phone apps and swiping in certain directions, as well as replacing one original scene with one about dick pics. Although I don’t mind shows embracing the times they were written in, I also didn’t mind these fairly innocuous updates to avoid being too much of a period piece.

Luckily, the humor I remembered from this show remained. (Although, at the beginning I got nervous. I didn’t quite get the framing device, with the creepy church sounds and vampire movie music. We did this show in college, and I did not remember anything spooky or creepy, so the first minute or so of Halloween noises and sermons made me question all my memories and experiences but fortunately it segued into fun musical theatre pretty quickly.) From the first awkward date to, well, the next awkward date, because the awkward dates provide the funniest material, the show made me laugh quite a bit. It’s super quirky (that’s the The Word for describing it), often weird af, and overall enjoyable, especially with the help of a great cast. Simon Lipkin (replacing Trevor Dion Nicholas from the initial announcement and I haven’t found out why yet and I hope Trevor is okay because what a guy), who is always a riot even as a creepy carnival barker (Assassins, not Carousel), is in top comedic form here, especially as the lawyer in the “Satisfaction Guaranteed” scene, something perfectly suited to his goofy-yet-intimidating-yet-fun schtick. Oliver Tompsett, another one of our fave West End guys, comes off equally well as long as he’s not saying ‘lasagna’ in a, what, Chicago? accent? Please don’t. His scene with Alice Fearn as two undatable nerds realizing they’re perfect for each other is a great show of zero ego (he looks ridiculous) and all talent.

Alice Fearn and Brenda Edwards get to show off as well, playing virtually the entire range of adult female character types. Their duet “Single Man Drought” was one of the definite highlights of the production, with their strong voices and stage presence convincing you it was a power anthem despite the context of the material.

A dip in energy came from the end of the first ‘act’, with the scene of the gay couple that felt vaguely homophobic, like very 1990s with the ‘acting gay’ thing (also the baby talk-into-sort-of-rap was a musical low point, woof), through the wedding and into the married couple vignettes, probably because the dating world is just funnier than the married world. Married problems are serious and sad! But the steam picked up again with the other highlight of the night, Tompsett’s gorgeous “Shouldn’t I Be Less in Love with You?” I mean, it’s like Cassidy Jansen was off in the wings about to forgive him for screwing up Romeo & Juliet by belting her face off. (That’s an & Juliet joke.) This one song and his performance ended the typical second act doldrums of many musicals from this era. Just beautiful.

The final scene of the widows meeting at a funeral was objectively sad in content, but it didn’t capture the emotion it aimed to. Something about it felt off, maybe a bit forced to have us immediately need to form an emotional impression of characters we have no connection to, and also yeah Lipkin sounds like a pretty Jewish name but his old New York Jew impression still felt…wrong to me. But with the joyous, catchy finale and its wonderful four-part-harmony introduction to the title song (once you get past the creepy church noises again), the show ended on a pleasant high note. Overall, it’s a solid production of this quirky (there we go again) show that tries to be goofy and ridiculous as often as it tries to be serious and important, where overall it just makes for a pretty good time.

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