I Love You! You're Perfect! Now Change!

I Love You! You’re Perfect! Now Change!

The Garner Galleria Theatre: 2/11 – 6/24

Denver Center Attractions’ record breaking “I Love You! You’re Perfect! Now Change!” is back and well on its way to a second long term love affair with the Denver audience. There are three new actors and one vet in the cast. Shannan Steele is the only actor cast in both incarnations of this hilarious musical comedy. Her tragi-comic performance of the very first dating video of the newly widowed- I mean divorced- Rose Ritz is by turns funny, sad and soul shredding. If your eyes are still dry at the end of this scene your heart is no longer functioning. Call the paramedics. Mostly though the show is filled with bright music and witty situational comedy mirroring the dating, mating and nesting habits of the young and the nestless. The three newbies in the cast are phenomenal talents one and all. They are: Robert Michael Sanders, Daniel Langhoff and Lauren Shealy. Robert Michael Sanders’ delivery of the show’s most heart-breakingly tender song, ”Shouldn’t I Be Less in Love With You?” is of the unforgettably brilliant variety. Mr. Langhoff’s performance as a hen-pecked husband who gets his mojo back while driving “On the Highway of Love” is a stitch. Ms. Lauren’s “He Called Me” and “Always a Bridesmaid” give her a chance to go all out with her outrageously brilliant comic acting and awesome set of pipes. Sanders’ and Steele’s singing and hilarious acting of “A Stud and a Babe” provides high contrast comedy as a couple of delusional daters, who are giving themselves a dose of reality therapy. Langhoff and Shealy are funny and touching as an elderly couple of lonely-hearts finding a second go at love on the viewing and funeral circuit singing, ”I Can Live With That.” Musical Director Troy Schuh on piano and violinist Rebecca Burchfield provide a thoroughly enjoyable accompaniment to the proceedings. As always Ray Roderick has given us the angel in the details of the show. His attention to those pesky moments when we feel most vulnerable pays off with directorial gusto. Besides his pacing the show at a fine directorial clip Roderick also choreographs. Charles R. MacLeod’s lighting design enhances the show by illuminating Lisa Orzolek’s attractively understated scenic design with a chroma key of festive hues. Meghan Anderson Doyle’s costumes are spot on.

If you are a Love! Perfect! Change! virgin you will fall in love at first sight with this show, these actors and the twenty characters they portray. This reviewer has seen the show five times at The Garner and three times in other venues throughout the city.  The jokes in this production are as fresh and funny as the first time around and you will still choke up where it’s called for.

This is the perfect date show.

Run to see it.

Denver Center Attractions presents I LOVE YOU, YOU’RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE, at the Garner Galleria Theatre through June 24. I LOVE YOU, YOU’RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE opened to rave reviews on June 29, 2000 becoming Denver’s longest running musical by 2005. Tickets are now on sale at www.denvercenter.org or by calling 303.893.4100.