Today and tonight signify Friday, Jan. 30.
SEQUIM — Pat Owens, veteran theater director, was not interested in this musical titled “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.”
A friend urged him to consider it anyway. So Owens gave a listen to some of the music from the show.
And “Shouldn’t I Be Less in Love with You?,” a husband’s breakfast-table ode to his wife of 30 years, reeled him right in.
Owens, his cast, crew and on-stage band are opening “I Love You” tonight, replete with a champagne party afterward at Olympic Theatre Arts, Sequim’s playhouse at 414 N. Sequim Ave.
The show has a small cast: two men, two women. But as anyone who’s seen this show since it opened Off-Broadway 19 years ago, “I Love You” is complicated.
“There are 18 scenes,” Owens said, “and 14 costume changes times the four actors,” who play multiple roles on the road to romance.
James Willis, for example, plays males across the life cycle, from a 10-year-old boy riding in the back seat of the car to one very charming old man.
He also plays a nerd who dreams of being cool in the number titled “A Stud and a Babe.” The nerd, aka “Babe” opposite him is portrayed by Leona Voss, the actress formerly known as Elise Ray, and costarring with them are Joel Yelland and Sheenieka Dolan, a performer brand-new to the stage.
She’s never done theater before but mustered the guts to audition for this, of all shows.
Owens, who’s worked with a great variety of actors, immediately saw her ability.
But when he called to tell her she had the part, Dolan’s response was along the lines of “Get out of here.”
Now, however, she’s finding plenty of familiar situations.
In that “Stud and a Babe” song, for instance, “I relate, so much, to when Leona says, ‘I’m awkward and whiny.’”
“Cantata for a First Date,” another of the songs in the first act, brings all four players together to reflect on how “we all have baggage.” And in the course of the show, Dolan gets to play a bridesmaid, a homemaker and “someone’s really annoying mother,” all roles she suspects she may play in real life one day.
Act One culminates in a wedding; Act Two is all about what happens next. Beside the lovers is the on-stage band: violinist Leah Marsh, pianist Steven Humphrey, bass man Carl Honore and musical director Valerie Lape.
“I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” with book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro and music by Jimmy Roberts, first opened at New York City’s Westside Theatre in 1996. It ran for 5,003 performances over the next 12 years. It has since come to stages from Los Angeles to Barcelona to Tokyo, complete with its songs ranging from “He Called Me” to “Marriage Tango” to “I Can Live with That.”
In Sequim, the cast is small but the crew big. The team making all of this love happen includes choreographer Anna Pederson, stage manager Steve Schultz, lighting designer Rich Olson, set designer Sharon DelaBarre, builder Peter Greene, costume designer Patty Davis, sound mixers Philip Mortensen and Pam Bennett and prompter-dresser Tina Ryan.
Willis, for his part, has one more scene to mention: the one called “The Lasagna Incident.”
It’s about two people who find true love.
So yes, there are ridiculous moments, Willis said, but “some are so real. They will speak to people.”
