I Love You Becaauughhh

I feel like Lydia's usually the harsh critic, and I'm a bit more forgiving. However, sometimes they're not so much to forgive. So we went and saw this musical in the Village called "I Love You Because." Let me summarize the plot for you. Boy and girl meet. Boy and girl fall for each other. Silly friends make jokes. Boy and girl end up together. Thrilling, huh? Such intrigue, such suspense, such originality. Apparently, this show is supposed to be based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Disclaimer: This doesn't mean it's any good.

Okay, so here's the deal. This is the impression I got after this first ten minutes of watching this show. Imagine you have a pair of kids who have never really written a musical. So they think of a bunch of things they know about in college that they think are funny, like using febreze, and funny pick up lines, and they try to make a musical out of these silly little vignettes. And then they try and just tie them together with a plot. And by "with a plot" I dont' really mean a plot, but rather a generic love story that people use as plots when they can't think of anything creative (and then say it's a modern re-telling of Pride and Prejudice). And then they fill the musical with slightly catchy, poppy, sappy love songs that are easy to write and not in any way memorable and exciting and basically all sound the same. I would go look up what the songs are, but they're basically just as follow: song about loving girl, song about wanting girl, song about loving boy, song about being scared to love boy, angsty love song about hating girl, angstly love song about being mad at boy, sappy love song about needing girl, sappy love song about getting together, angsty love song about not being ready, angsty love song about being angsty, sappy love song about discovering the girl, sappy love song about ending up together. Except maybe not in that order. So that's the issue I guess with the musical itself. The characters are just so uninterestingly stereotypical and cliche, and it was just blaaahhh.

The production I guess has its own points. The show is pretty not greatly cast. You have this pair of brothers that look nothing alike. The main guy walks out, and after his first line, it was just like, "I'm sorry, I can't believe this guy is a heterosexual romantic male lead." Mind you, I think they all had pretty good pipes (for belting those generic love songs), but it was still just like these characters just don't work. It didn't help that every third time Stephanie D'Abruzzo spoke, I had to turn to Lydia and say "Kate Monster!"

Okay, to be fair, a lot of the audience seemed to love the show. I even turned to Lydia and asked if the laughs and "awwws" were the audience mocking the show, and she said they were actually sincere! So I guess if you want a silly, generic love story that is neither creative nor interesting, then by all means, check it out! It wasn't even particularly feel-good. I mean, it wasn't feel-bad, but it wasn't really all that warm and fuzzy. Maybe it would have been more feel-good if I wasn't opening the playbill every two songs to count how many were left, and thinking, "Dear god, we just heard this song, why are they singing ANOTHER version of it? Why do they keep singing?"

Yeah, so obviously I highly recommend. That was sarcastic. But if you're looking for a perfect date evening for Valentine's Day, skip the show and go do something romantic and fun.

Why am I so mean tonight?