Photo Credit: Mark Frohna
THEATRE
I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change @ Skylight Music Theatre, Feb. 3-19
A story about love in all its stages—from first awkward kiss, through dating, marriage, child-rearing and on to old age—told through comedic vignettes and song, is just what we need to combat mid-winter doldrums. Thankfully, that’s exactly what Skylight brings to the Cabot Theatre for a 13-day run. With book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro and music by Jimmy Roberts, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change is the second-longest running Off-Broadway musical: It opened at the Westside Theatre in 1996 and closed in 2008 after more than 5,000 performances.
I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change has been staged around the world, and DiPietro’s witty words have been translated into at least 17 languages. Apparently, there must be something universal in its tales of love and relationships, and something quite attention-grabbing it its tagline offering audience members insight into “everything you have ever secretly thought about dating, romance, marriage, lovers, husbands, wives and in-laws, but were afraid to ask.” This current production is directed by Pam Kriger and Jack Forbes Wilson and stars Skylight vets Doug Clemons, Karen Estrada, Kathryn Hausman and Rick Pendzich. (John Jahn)
She Kills Monsters @ Village Playhouse, Feb. 3-19
Vietnamese American playwright Qui Nguyen’s résumé includes a long list of action-adventure tales; no surprise then that he began writing for Marvel Studios last year. His plays include such evocative titles as Soul Samurai, Alice in Slasherland, Living Dead in Denmark and She Kills Monsters. West Allis’ Village Playhouse presents the latter—billed chillingly and comedically as a “romp into the world of fantasy role-playing games,” the latter, specifically, a reference to the famous “Dungeons and Dragons” universe. She Kills Dragons is “laden with homicidal fairies, nasty ogres and ’90s pop culture,” sure to appeal to the role-player geek in all of us. (John Jahn)
Blithe Spirit @ Waukesha Civic Theatre, Feb. 3-19
It was while he was on the coast of Wales following the destruction of his London office during a German bombing raid that Noël Coward later recalled the following: “I smoked several cigarettes in rapid succession, staring gloomily out of the window… I fixed the paper into the machine and started: Blithe Spirit. A Light Comedy in Three Acts. For six days I worked… On Friday evening, May 9, the play was finished and, disdaining archness and false modesty, I will admit that I knew it was witty, well-constructed and that it would be a success.” How right Coward was; this comic play about a novelist, his wife, an eccentric medium and the ghost she conjures—first seen to great acclaim in London’s West End in 1941—has never left the world’s stages. (John Jahn)
