Opening Night for I LOVE YOU BECAUSE
And after the reviews . . . came opening night!
I LOVE YOU BECAUSE, the new off-Broadway musical, officially opened this past Tuesday (Valentine’s Day, appropriately enough), and BroadwayWorld was there to capture it all.
(We apologize for the lack of snark in this post. We sat here in front of our screen for a good half-hour before realizing it was a lost cause. We choose to blame Jane, because that’s what Mrs. B would have done.)
February 18th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
I saw I Love You Because in previews in NYC in January. It’s a cute, lively musical very, very, very loosely based on P&P. Like a true Austen junkie, I spent most of Act I lamenting all the ways the characters and plot didn’t fit the novel, but when I relaxed in Act II, I enjoyed the show more. Act I ends with the song. “I love you,anyway” sung by the female Darcy character. This, of course, mimics the Hunsford proposal. “I love you because,” the payoff song in Act II transforms the reasons against love into reasons for love, and I thought that was pretty clever.
I’d suggest this as an entertaining night out for people who can get over the fact that the “Darcy” character has more of a Lizzy personality and that the “Lizzy” character has more of a Darcy peronality and that the “Jane” and “Bingley” characters resemble no characters I ever encountered in any Austen novel (including the Juvenalia!). For me, the “I love you, anyway” and the “I love you because,” moments made seeing the show worthwhile.