The Brown County Playhouse opens its summer season with Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts musical "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change." It's a sharp, funny and energetic look at modern heterosexual love and relationships. There's a couple, so caught up in the rhythm of their careers that they agree to simply skip through their entire relationship from the discomfort of the first date to the bittersweet memories of their last meeting. There are humorous takes on what it means to be male and what it means to be female. There's even some insight into the effects that children have on a couple's focus, and finally a tender though funny look at dating at advanced age. Four actors, Heath Calvert, Kate Lindsey, Mark Willett and Kiersten Vorheis play the show's sixty-four characters in twenty sharply focused and well paced sketches.
Although satire is very much a part of "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change," director Murray McGibbon has drawn nuanced portrayals and even at the extremes the characters are always recognizable as real people trying to connect. Costume designer Robbie Stanton has handled the immense job of designing and supervising the production of three hundred costume pieces and the even larger job of seeing that they get on and off in good order. Music director Charles Prestinari and violinist Deborah Shebish always had just the right touches for the score.