I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change
Burton-Taylor Theatre
Tue 1st - Sat 5th Feb 2005 7.30pm

Sometimes, nowadays, you get the impression that if you aren’t at least bi-curious, you aren’t really trying. It is rather refreshing, then, that I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change was promoted with the tag-line “they’re here, they’re straight, get used to it”. It is unabashedly about heterosexual love: men and women, boys and girls, husbands and wives. Through a series of comical songs and sketches, it takes a wry look at its subject matter, from a comprehensive variety of angles.

The cast – two guys and two girls, naturally – take on the roles of over twenty characters between them. Many of these characters, by necessity, are just your basic Guy and Girl, but when they need to be the characters become genuinely distinctive and memorable. The forty year old divorcee in the video-dating sketch is particularly striking, and provides a well timed touch of pathos. (While we are on the subject, the cast do as well as can be expected at playing roles significantly older than themselves. It is a little difficult to accept that two fresh-faced twenty-somethings have been through thirty years of marriage together, but this is largely unavoidable).

In tone, the show is a mix of straight musical and BBC2 sketch comedy. The humour is largely observational in nature, and this does lead to some very slight problems: “love, sex and relationships” is very well covered ground, and it is hard to make any observations about it that haven’t been made before. The show does not say anything that staggeringly new; there is a shortage of good single men, people lie to impress prospective partners, marriage can be frightening and the sex suffers; but it says what it says in a funny, irreverent, and engaging way. There is something of a reliance on stereotype (the “Guy” song, for example) but this, once again, is a limitation of observational comedy: “Women spend ages worrying about their hair, and men never notice” is a potentially funny observation, “Men and Women are all very different and we shouldn’t make generalisations” really isn’t.
The music itself is classic show tune/comic song fare. It is upbeat, easy to listen to, and generally catchy. I did not go home humming any of the tunes, but that may be because I stayed on to watch Ovid’s Women.

Overall this is a very good show. It’s got good gags, good tunes, and a good cast. It isn’t especially highbrow, and sometimes it seems that it’s based on the way relationships between men and women are supposed to work, rather than the way they actually do (for example, I don’t actually think I have ever met anybody who actually goes on formal “dates” with people), but it’s an extremely enjoyable evening out. What’s more, it’s at the Burton-Taylor, so tickets are extremely affordable. See it, it may well be the best fiver you spend all week.

Daniel Hemmens 02/02/05