I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change – Chiswick Playhouse

Naomi Slights and George Rae in I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change at Chiswick Playhouse. Picture: Savannah Photographic

I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change at the Chiswick Playhouse, London until 30 November 2019.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

I Love You? Yes! You’re Perfect? Not quite (a few dodgy accents and too many of them) but laugh-out-loud funny and lovable. Now Change? Wouldn’t alter a word.

In fact, quite a lot of words have already been changed in this new, streamlined (cut 25 minutes from its last London Fringe appearance) and Anglicised version which launches Chiswick Playhouse under its new title but in its old, spruced-up space round the corner from Turnham Green station.

For the price of not much more than a round of drinks at the convivial Tabard hostelry downstairs, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change is terrific value for money, directed with Broadway-style slickness by Olivier Award-winner Charlotte Westenra, best known for her work at the Donmar and the Old Vic, and performed with bewildering versatility by a cast of four who give this lightweight charmer everything they’ve got.

Take a bow, George Rae, Dominic Hodson, Laura Johnson and Naomi Slights. This quartet play umpteen roles in a series of unconnected vignettes about love in all its forms, wringing every ounce out of Joe DiPietro’s sharp lyrics and Jimmy Roberts’ pleasing but mostly unremarkable music (although ‘I Will Be Loved Tonight’, beautifully sung by Slights, is a winner).

The many costume and scene changes are achieved seamlessly and at breakneck speed with Johnson, a lady of a thousand faces, peeling off different-coloured dress after dress as she recounts the number of times she’s been ‘Always  Bridesmaid, Never a Bride’, one of many highlights.

Hodson’s middle-aged dad who is prouder of his car than his unruly family is fine acting and Rae pondering why he still adores his wife so much while she indifferently sits opposite him glued to her magazine is movingly done.

Their final scene as creaking elderly gay gentlemen attending yet another wake, one not even sure who it is for, and Hodson forward enough to suggest a date with the initially reticent Rae brings the song cycle to a nostalgic end.

It begins with an excruciating but hilarious first date between a clumsy boy and girl (Rae and Johnson), unlucky when it comes to getting their share of good looks, wishing they were ‘A Stud and a Babe’ and moves on to ‘The Very First Dating Video of Rosie Ritz’, a powerful but brutally honest monologue by the impressive Slights.

She blusters all the wrong things, that she’s a 40-year-old divorcee with kids who’s been dumped for a ‘size 18 with a limp’. No wonder the recorded voice at the other end asks “Do you want to do it again?”

Maybe the funniest scene is ‘Whatever Happened To Baby’s Parents’ with the well-meaning Hodson visiting two married lesbian friends, both called Sarah, and bearing gifts for their new arrival only to be virtually ignored by the besotted, coo-cooing parents who won’t even let him see their sleeping brat, confusingly also named Sarah, for fear of disturbing her.

Instead, they bore the pants off him by insisting he looks at all their wretched photos of the child and then can’t comprehend why he suddenly clears off.

The ‘Funerals Are For Dating’ sketch is not quite the end because all four return for the upbeat ‘I Can Live With That’ finale (choreography by Steven Harris) concluding that all relationships, whatever their sexuality or gender, however challenging they are, and whatever compromises have to be made, are, in the end, worth the effort. Well, maybe not all…

In 2017 DiPietro and Roberts updated their show that ran for 12 years from 1996 to 2008 and for 5,003 performances Off-Broadway to bring in more modern references such as gay marriage, online dating and even a mention of Trump golf courses (although forgoing the chance to have a swipe at the Donald’s outrageous cheating!).

The original show failed to catch fire when briefly brought to the West End in 1999 – maybe the humour was too American – but now in this revised, improved version being seen in the UK for the first time and doctored by Westenra into all manner of British and Irish accents, from posh to Scouser to Essex and one or two hard to recognise, it sits perfectly in a bijou Fringe theatre such as the Playhouse as it requires no fancy stage design or anything more musically than Stuart Pedlar on the piano.

More than that, its 80-minute, no-interval length means there’s plenty of time to eat, drink and be merry afterwards. And this is just the show to put you in a bubbly mood.

It certainly deserved a bigger audience than the 30 who laughed continuously and  applauded generously the night I went. Warmly recommended.

Jeremy Chapman