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Rough justice

Theater

Speed dating

An ensemble show of three men and three women, I Love You presents a series of stand-alone scenes and musical numbers to walk us through the vicissitudes of heterosexual love. From a full-company “Cantata for a First Date” and Stan and Pam’s time-saving measures, the cast goes on to flit nimbly in and out of an impressive number of roles, ages, and accents, as the show progresses from dating through marriage and on to the golden years. All six actors are superlative in their ensemble transformations; each is just as adroit at comic character roles as at straight ones. In the skit and musical number “A Stud and a Babe,” Lindsay Luppino and Laurence Freeman wear profoundly unattractive multi-colored synthetics and pull out the character stops as two dorks who find each other; later Luppino and Freeman play squabbling kids in the back seat of their dueling parents’ car. There’s no upstaging or outshining; these performances are beautifully balanced and superbly sung, and it’s continually a surprise and a treat to see who each of the six will become next.

The show’s style of comedy is advertised as Seinfeldian. I’d say the writing is not quite as snarky (and is occasionally way more earnest; sometimes a little cloyingly), but that’s otherwise a good descriptor of a play of New Yorkish sensibility that goes to gleefully exaggerated lengths to send up the pleasures and plaints of romance — as well as fantasy fixes for it. In one scene, Freeman walks in on Becki Flader and Isaacs after a poor round in the sack, and offers the contractual services of “Jacoby and Meyers and Masters and Johnson”: “If your partner does not take you to heaven, we’ll take them to court.” Later, Luppino shines in the fabulously witty country number “Always a Bridesmaid,” in which she details all the horrid satin and velour she’s had to buy because her friends “can’t assess a man or a dress.” It makes the old phrase into a mantra instead of a plaint.

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