Reviews 2012
Reviews 2012
✭✭✭✩✩
music by Joshua Salzman, book and lyrics by Ryan Cunningham, directed by Darcy Evans
Angelwalk Theatre, Studio Theatre, Toronto Centre for the Arts, Toronto
March 30-April 15, 2012
“The Dating Game”
I Love You Because is an innocuous off-Broadway musical from 2006 that sets itself no lofty goals and mostly achieves them. The plot focusses solely on dating and relationships which places the show solidly in small summer theatre territory where an audience seeks mild amusement for two hours with no impetus to think about anything much. The music is lively but unmemorable and the dialogue is written like a sitcom. What elevates this Angelwalk Theatre production out of the humdrum is Darcy Evans’s snappy direction and fine performances from the six-person cast.
From its beginnings the show has advertised itself as “inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice”. The show does not involve a family with five daughters to marry off. Instead there are only two couples and all Ryan Cunningham, the writer of the book and lyrics, has borrowed are a few names and the set-up that couples who dislike each other intensely on first meeting eventually fall in love. All Cunningham seems to have gathered from Austen is the clichéd notion that opposites attract. Unfortunately, he makes the two sets of couple such complete opposites that happy ending is totally unbelievable.
Instead of the five Bennett sisters, Cunningham gives us two brothers, Austin Bennet (Jeff Madden) and his older brother Jeff (Jay Davis). Instead of Mr. FitzWilliam Darcy and his friend Charles Bingley, Cunningham gives us Marcy FitzWilliams (Elena Juatco) and her friend Diana Bingley (Gabi Epstein). While the blocking figure in the novel is Lady Catherine de Bourgh, in the musical it is Austin’s unseen ex-girlfriend Catherine. Gender-reversing the couples is a cute idea, but what is cleverest about Cunningham’s story is the use of two characters (Michael De Rose and Cara Leslie) as the bartenders as the local pub or, reversing their aprons, the baristas at the local coffee shop who act as wry observers of the dating games and therapist/confidant(e)s for the four main characters.
Austin is an orderly, conservative, risk-averse guy whose life-plan is thrown out of whack we he finds his girlfriend Catherine in bed with another guy. How a greeting-card writer can believe that he had his whole life with Catherine planned out ahead is hard to believe. Has he no ambitions to move to a more lucrative line of work? Austin’s brother is a dimwitted, malaprop-prone, love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy. He proposes that Austin should have a fling with a girl he’s not remotely interested in to wipe out his memories of Catherine.
Meanwhile, Marcy is the latest version of that cliché of musicals, comedies and musical comedies since the 1950s--a “free spirit”. She is supposedly a photographer, which contrary to how Cunningham depicts it, is fussy, demanding work. Unlike Austin, Marcy is completely ruled by whim, with the significant exception that she submits herself to strict rules of her actuary friend Diana about how to deal with rebound dating. Why she should do this makes no sense since Diana has had such a dismal track record in her own love life.
While the “opposites attract” theory plays out in a predictable way, the main problem is that neither the set-up nor the resolution of the story is credible. As a result, we really don’t care about any of the characters or whether they remain together or apart.
An intriguing musical score would help, but composer Joshua Salzman has gone with a generic off-Broadway style that is too jazzy to be adult contemporary and not melodic or hook-laden enough to be pop. One song tends to sound very much like another except for the few times when Salzman imitates others genres like 1960s pop in “That’s What’s Gonna Happen” with the three men as Supremes or tries a more complex quartet as in “What Do We Do It For?”
Madden, who starred not long ago in the gig theatre next door as Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys, inevitably steals the show with his natural charisma and nuanced acting even though Austin is supposed to be a dork. He has that indefinable spark that can transform Cunningham’s intermittently clever lyrics into heartfelt expressions of feeling. Juatco does her best with her role, but Cunningham gives Marcy no chance to convey the sense of mystery that Darcy does in the novel. Yet, she has a strong voice that makes us believe that even superficial people can feel deep emotions.
Both Jay Davis and Gabi Epstein have a sense of playfulness that helps make us believe their characters could certainly get along long enough for a good, no-regrets fling. Michael De Rose and Cara Leslie helps to set the action in a humorous context. Since Salzman seems more inspired when writing for larger groups, it’s too bad he doesn’t find a way to include De Rose and Leslie as a chorus more often.
Scott Penner has designed an ingenious set to serve as the apartment for all four individuals. A thin unit on rollers with bottles and glasses on one side and bags of coffee and cups on the other makes its easy to switch rapidly between the couples’ various imbibing venues. His costumes for Gabi Epstein, however, are unbecoming.
Lily Ling gave a peppy account of the score, but it was difficult to know if she and the three other members of the band were actually there in the theatre or if the music was pre-recorded. In either case the balance between the singers and the band too often favoured the band. The Studio Theatre is so small (only 200 seats) it really makes no sense to mic the singers. The Shaw Festival forgoes mics for musicals in the Royal George Theatre (328 seats), so why use them in a smaller space?
Fans of Jeff Madden, of whom there are many, will not be disappointed, and neither will fans of the other five cast members. Fans of Jane Austen, however, likely will, since the musical trivializes her novel, and so will theatre-goers who relish the more complex musicals of Adam Guettel or Jason Robert Brown. I Love You Because is pretty much the equivalent of live sitcom episode with songs. It’s Salzman and Cunningham’s first musical. Let’s hope they move on to something more substantial.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Elena Juatco and Jeff Madden. Photo ©2012 Vincent Perri.
For tickets, visit www.angelwalk.ca.
2012-04-01
I Love You Because