I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change!

I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change is a director’s dream. It’s a musical whose rights allow you to actually do something other than a straight performance of its book, there’s flexibility in how numbers are performed, and most of all there’s loads of room for artistic license.Off-Broadway’s longest running show is less a story, more a collection of scenes and songs in a narrative arc from first date to marriage to finding love in old age. Most often it is performed with a cast of four, although Viva Touring have chosen a cast of ten for this production, citing too many talented auditionees as their reason.It certainly works in the bigger ensemble numbers. A strong ‘Prologue and Cantata for a First Date’ shows this off well, as do later songs - ‘Wedding Vows’ and ‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change’ being other good examples. Unfortunately though, it seems that this doesn’t translate as well to the smaller songs, performed by between one and four people - as is the case in the majority of the musical.For such a supposedly strong group of performers, two or three particular actors are used far more than their colleagues. I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change is famed for having a particularly hilarious script and well-written, humorous songs, but much of the comedy is lost behind badly-attempted American accents and voices which weren’t quite up to the acrobatics required by the score. This isn’t true across the board - ‘Hey There, Single Guy/Gal’ is performed with verve and is brilliantly funny - but it is the case in a number of sketches and songs.It’s well directed, though nothing new has been done here. We have a fairly straight performance for one with so much freedom, but it is let down by the wild difference in its cast’s talents, not to mention a violinist who was seemingly unable to keep up with the music (or play many of the lines at all).In this case, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change is a show to watch for its brilliant script and songs, not for its performance. This one isn’t quite up to scratch.