LOVE AND CHANGE, SONOMA STYLE
Dating and mating get fully examined and fully skewered in I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change at Sonoma Arts Live in downtown Sonoma, through May 4.
Ably helmed by North Bay veteran Carl Jordan in Andrews Hall at the Sonoma Community Center, the production is a series of musical comedy sketches that explore everything from tentative inquiries to the burden of family obligations to the possibilities of romance late in life. Among the longest-running off-Broadway musicals, the original production by Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts debuted in Teaneck, New Jersey in February 1995. In 1996 it moved to New York where it ran for 18 years.
The hugely popular and delightful show subsequently played internationally and has been a regional theater favorite for decades. Its style and feel owing much to ‘70s and ‘80s TV fare such as Love, American Style and pop-culture phenomena such as Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, this version has been updated by director Jordan to make it feel more contemporary, with plenty of references to cell phones, online dating, and even a gay couple dealing with a new baby.
Backed by an excellent four-piece band led by Ellen Patterson, the show features four ace performers—two women (Jenny Veilleux and Sarah Lundstrom) and two men (Robert Nelson and Jourdan Oliver-Verde)—in many possible combinations. It opens with a probe of dating (“Cantata for a First Date” and “Not Tonight, I’m Busy, Busy, Busy”), moves on to a bit of teasing (“A Stud and a Babe”) before venturing into the lack of available guys, their typical cluelessness, and the ubiquitous hassles of managing a family. An especially juicy sketch comes late in the first act—“Scared Straight,” with Oliver-Verde as a serial murderer doling out lifestyle advice while doing multiple life sentences.
The first act is amusing throughout, but the second act takes the show in a more serious direction, opening with a solo by Lundstrom in a ridiculously oversized poofy dress. She’s in exceptional voice as she delivers the lament “Always a Bridesmaid,” about the misery of having served at several weddings but never going to the alter herself.
“Whatever Happened to Baby’s Parents?” puts a contemporary spin on parenthood, with Nelson and Oliver-Verde as gay couple Frank and Frank, dealing with their new child, Frank Jr. Veilleux is wonderful as Frank-and-Frank’s visitor in a stunning green leather jacket, and later rivets the audience as a divorcée composing her first online bio for a dating site. The multi-talented Nelson also designed projections that illuminate every scene, many with his own hand-drawn cartoons providing nice visual clues above the stage.
A hilarious bit of choreography by Kate LeLand (who is also costume designer) has the four actors scooting around the stage in a make-believe car while singing their hearts out in ”On the Highway of Love.” The show takes a somber turn toward its conclusion with “I Can Live with That,” a song that emerges from a pickup scene at a funeral, with Oliver-Verde and Lundstrom as cane-wielding elders.
It’s all tremendous lightweight entertainment. Pacing and presentation of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change are both above reproach. The four actors and the band knock it out of the park with the closing performance of a song by the same name. This show addresses eternal human problems with insight and candor, and with plenty of silliness—much-needed balm in an age of doubt and darkness.
photos by Katie Kelley
I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change
Sonoma Arts Live
Andrews Hall, Sonoma Community Center, 276 East Napa St. in Sonoma
Thurs-Sat at 7:30; Sun at 2
ends on May 4, 2025
for tickets ($25-$42), call 707.484.4874 or visit Sonoma Arts
Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Circle and president of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: [email protected]
