‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change’: A breezy play on modern love

Love, how do I tell thee? Let me count the ways. 

When you talk about a saturated topic like love, a single story couldn’t possibly be enough. Maybe write many stories, and have as many characters as say 40.  

Enter "I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change."

The latest musical stage production from Repertory Philippines, it actually premiered in 1996 Off-Broadway and ran all through 1998 making it the second-longest running Off-Broadway musical.

Rep's staging, under the helm of theater director Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo, uses the 2018 version and goes straight on with the modern trappings of l’amour. 

A silk screen projecting a busy intersection at night welcomes the audience and sets the tone for the intersectionality of relationships prevalent in this production.

Throughout the stories, modern technologies — like dating apps, swiping left, and dick pics — are used as plot devices. 

Despite all these modern flourishings, however, the underlying desire for love and connection prevails. 

The vignettes are cut into two. The first act tells of love’s beginnings, dating, and hookups, culminating in a wedding. The second act centers on vignettes about marriage, family, and loss. You know, the serious stuff. As such, there may feel an imbalance between the two.

The first act covers a shorter period (dating to marriage) and feels more topical, focusing on modern gender dynamics. The second act meanwhile covers a longer period (marriage to everything else) and has more universal stories to tell: family, heartbreak, grief, and moving on.  

Making all these stories cohesive is the challenge for Lauchengco-Yulo and crew. To execute this, minimal set design was used. Precise costume changes and choreography were adapted to make the transitions seamless. 

One transition even had an inmate at a correctional facility transition into a priest at a wedding. That had people laughing.

Helping Lauchengco-Yulo manifest this are assistant director Cara Barredo, musical director Ejay Yatco, set and costume designer Joey Mendoza, associate set designer Lawyn Cruz, associate costume designer Hershee Tantiado, projection designer GA Fallarme, light designer Meliton Roxas Jr., choreographer Stephen Viñas and sound designer Aji Manalo.

Tricky as setting up numerous stories may be, the greatest challenge is given to the four actors playing a diverse set of characters: Gian Magdangal, Gabby Padilla, Krystal Kane, and Marvin Ong. 

Each returning to the stage after years of pause, all four gamely jumped into every scene their character is on. While quick costume changes seemed to slow down and impact the pace of their next performance, all four of them came to meet the challenge.

There were stand-out characters and storylines. Magdangal as the loveless convict brought proper seriousness to a funny situation. Kane’s “always the bridesmaid, never the bride” vignette had its charm. And Ong, whose characters ranged from a geek wishing to be a stud to a middle-aged man reflecting on his marriage, proved he still has the chops.

While Padilla’s performance as the divorcee looking for love online was commendable, perhaps a better staging would have enhanced the story. The audience was only shown a side of her face, and an upside-down video of her recording simultaneously playing in the background, mimicking a video being recorded by a smartphone, served only as a distraction.  

Some storylines were weaker than others. One vignette had lawyers intervening during a couple’s intimate act, its cheekiness landing flat.

Given this, all four managed to weave the stories together into a cohesive whole with a sense of relationship beginnings and marriage endings. And that elevates the musical beyond frothy rom-com territory. 

This, in the words of Lauchengco-Yulo, grounds the characters in truth and highlights a desire for connection, magnified by the cold nature of likes and algorithms. 

Much like love, ‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change’ is far from perfect. But the production made enough changes to modernize the story for the better, reaching deeper depths along the process.  

So maybe there are ways to count love after all. Watch this production to find out. 

‘I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change’ runs until July 6, 2024 at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Plaza, Ayala Ave. corner Gil Puyat Ave. in Makati City. Tickets are available via TicketWorld and Ticket2Me.

— LA, GMA Integrated News