After a brutal winter, Colonial Players welcomes spring with its latest production, mindful that this is the season when our thoughts turn lightly to love. All stages of love are explored in "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" by Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts.
The show is marketed as delving into "everything you have ever secretly thought about dating, romance, marriage, lovers, husbands, wives and in-laws, but were afraid to admit." Love and relationships are revealed in a series of vignettes, from dating to marriage to widowed partners dealing with their loss, all tied together by Roberts' music and DiPietro's lyrics.
I first encountered this show a few months ago at Toby's Dinner Theatre of Columbia, where a versatile foursome delivered laughs while creating the highs and lows they experienced as they searched for love. Less than two months later, I found the show equally amusing at Colonial Players' in-the-round theater, where the more intimate setting draws the audience into the action.
CP's production is directed by Terry Averill and Mark Hildebrand, who transform the theater space into a funeral home for the first scene - a service for an ordinary woman whose long life is to be celebrated.
According to the directors' notes, this place is "where we can reflect upon our own lives and the lives of those we love, where we can stop long enough to remember our personal triumphs and defeats and travel into the inner sanctum of our minds and hearts."
This novel approach seemed a stretch, but it served to acquaint audience members with the three Proteans (artists of change) who are vital to the success of the production.
Greeting each arriving audience member, Proteans Dirk Geratz, Edd Miller and Tom Stuckey also skillfully change sets for 19 scene changes.
Also adding much to scene changes and each musical number is pianist Ryan Shookman, a major musical presence always in view who punctuates the tempo of each number, is perfectly attuned to each singer he accompanies, and provides a natural musical flow between numbers. Shookman was joined by violinist Anuraag Sharma on opening night.
CP's cast features a talented actor-singer-dancer foursome playing a variety of characters spanning a range of ages and temperaments. In what she describes as her "biggest musical role to date," Shannon Benil proves well-equipped to play 13 characters, from teen to clergywoman to 40-ish divorcee making her first dating video. She is perhaps most touching as the recently divorced Rose Ritz, whose husband left her for an older woman, as she announces her availability by video.
Jeff Sprague creates 13 memorable characters, humorously portraying the would-be race car driver dad when he takes his family on a wild ride in "On the Highway of Life," and impressing with his excellent singing, as he touchingly creates the husband married 30 years who asks "Shouldn't I Be Less in Love with You?"
Jamie Erin Miller, who impressed in "Rabbit Hole" last season, makes each of her 13 characters memorable, including a teen, a bride and a middle-aged mother, while revealing a lovely singing voice and a persuasive way with each song's lyrics.
An exciting find is Jeffrey Walter, a Key School junior, who can sing and dance and has no difficulty convincing the audience he is the 30-something bachelor son hesitant about marriage in "Hey There, Single Guy," a reluctant bridegroom, and a man looking forward to the evening's romance in the sexy "Marriage Tango" number.
The skilled, versatile cast of four is joined by two first-rate character actors - Carol Cohen and Danny Brooks, who bring unique warmth, authenticity and rare chemistry to the roles of Muriel and Arthur, a widowed pair who meet at a funeral home and embark on their own relationship.
Brooks also enlivens an earlier "Scared Straight" segment as a prisoner doing several consecutive life sentences who counsels his therapy group visitors to settle for something less than perfection.
The Biblical Prologue and Epilogue seemed a bit weighty to introduce these tales of searching for love, and it also was somewhat jarring to sum up the players' many excursions along the way. Although these first and last scenes are written into the show, I found them incongruously lofty, and they created an ending that was somewhat of a downer after an entertaining evening.
If you go "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" continues Thursdays-Sundays through April 18 (no shows April 1-4). Order tickets online at cplayers.com or call the box office at 410-268-7373. Tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for seniors and students.