I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE

Long Beach Press Telegram by John Farrell
Love may, or may not, be the center of all human experience. but in musical comedies, love is always the engine driving whatever else is going on. Passenger liners sink, cats fight, wars occur, pirates dance: It's all about love.

"I Love You, You're Perfect, Now change" takes the idea one step further: Why bother with a plot when you can have a heaping helping of the real thing without all those unnecessary distractions?

That formula, involving more than 20 short sketches with original music and plenty of laughs, has made "I Love You" the longest running off-Broadway revue ever, and has spawned dozens of productions across the country in the seven years that "I Love You" has held the boards in New York.

The most recent of these, a new production by Musical Theatre West, opened a three week run at the carpenter Performing Arts Center Saturday night and love, and a cast of four first-rate performers, triumphed.

Those four performers, Stan Chandler, Tami Tappan Damiano, Susan Hoffman and Lance Roberts, are the keys to this production's freshness. They are all young, attractive and engaging, and balance their light comedy skills with just the right amount of pathos. (Love, musical comedy love particularly, is always served sweet and sour.)

They are important because "I Love You" is a lot of fun (especially for folks looking for a good date-night entertainment), but hardly profound. Joe DePetro's book is full of funny lines and he writes some great rhymes, and Jimmy Roberts' music is charming and inventive, moving from ragtime to tango to country and western to blues without a hitch, but the overall level achieved is closer to fine television sketch comedy than anything as powerful as a stage musical can be.

That isn't to say that there isn't an idea behind these sketches. they trace a time line a certain as the story of a human life, beginning with the problems of dating and meeting ("Cantata for a First Date" and "A Stud and a Babe") through marriage and dealing with children ("On the Highway of Love" with four office chairs standing in for the family car) to "Funerals are for Dating," which takes the human experience right back to dating.

Kevin Clowes' set, a wall with a turntable in the center, a projection screen on one side and a platform for the two musicians on the other, is effective enough. Music director Diane King Vann plays the piano, and violinist Etsuo Ejiri adds his efforts, as the two-person musical ensemble onstage.

Larry Ruben has directed the performance with skill, but without the lively energy of the four cast members, the production would be hardly worth noticing.

There is now way to pick one of the four as best. Lance Roberts can make eating potato chips hilarious, and manages, with only two lines of dialogue, to steal the scene in one sketch called "Waiting, Trio" where he lies on the sofa watching a football game ("32 football seconds" to go) while the other cast members talk about, well, waiting. He is also a character actor of skill. In "Funerals are for Dating" he plays an elegant old man who manages to pick up an elderly lady (portrayed with equal talent by Susan Hoffman). Together they are a reminder of how love, and loneliness, continue throughout life.

Hoffman can move from elegance to naivete in the space of the few seconds for costume change, and she sings with a clear notion that every word, and every joke, matters.

Tammy Tappan Damiano is not only a bright singer, at home with funny and tearful lyrics, but shows herself a fine actress as well in the show's most poignant and demanding sketch, "The Very First Dating Video of Rose Ritz."

With her back to the audience, facing a video camera whose image is projected much larger than life on the stage left projection screen, Damiano Performs a soliloquy of loneliness, explaining how her husband left her alone for an older woman. She is at once funny and self-deprecating, vengeful and forgiving, in the long, exposed revelation of her emotional agony and her determination to find a better life.

Stan Chandler is tall, good looking and personable, and not afraid to make himself look ridiculous. He sings with authority, and, with Roberts, is the perfect male in "Why, 'Cause I'm a Guy."

Together these four turn this likable, lightweight show into something of a performing masterpiece, an elegant, swelligant dessert for lovers everywhere.

Though the show is not at all sexually explicit, there are enough adult references in the production to make Musical Theatre West recommend that the show is not suitable for children. The production continues through May 5.