By JESSICA NEU
My husband, Ben, and I just celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary. We met 13 years ago, in person, at work. Had someone asked me the day before I met my now husband all of the qualities I was searching for in my “perfect mate,” I am fairly confident that my list would not have closely aligned with Ben’s attributes. Nevertheless, I can confidently say that we are perfect for each other thirteen years later.
What, then, constitutes the perfect mate or a love that is real and authentic enough to last a lifetime?
The world premiere of the rom-com musical of the future, The Perfect Mate, explores dating and relationships in the year 2063. According to Pittsburgh CLO executive producer Mark Fleischer, The Perfect Mate was born during the Pittsburgh CLO’s Spark Festival in 2018. After undergoing numerous workshops and revisions, the full-scale musical, with book, music, and lyrics by Dan Lipton and David Rossmer, made its world premiere at the Greer Cabaret Theater on February 2nd, 2024. Autumn Hurlbert and Jimmy Nicholas star in this hilarious musical that follows Joan Sweete (Hurlbert) on her journey to find her one true love. After multiple failed relationships and no luck meeting someone in person via dating apps, Sweete, a teacher, instills the help of Susan Botelli (Josey Miller) and her colleagues to build her a custom bot who is her “perfect mate.”
Hurlbert is the only actor who plays a single character throughout the show. The rest of the five-person ensemble cast includes Nicholas, Miller, Marissa Buchheit, and Ryan Cavanaugh. Together, they round out this powerhouse musical by portraying everyone from Joan’s best friend, Moya (Buchheit), to her love interests (Nicholas), to the cleaning AI “homebody” robot cleaner (Cavanaugh), among other characters.
The show begins with the characters acknowledging the difficulty of finding love in the digital era because everyone wants the perfect mate. Still, they are all too distracted by the constant urge to remain tuned into social media and social networks. The Perfect Mate highlights how the digital era, now and in the foreseeable future, has created too many choices and none at all simultaneously, which serves as a metaphorical barrier for Joan to find love.
A significant difference between 2024 and 2063, and what makes The Perfect Mate particularly thought-provoking, is that technological advancements have led Joan and the rest of society into an AI-driven multi-verse. Joan teaches from home but puts on virtual reality goggles to enter her classroom in what audiences can interpret as the metaverse. She can step into the metaverse to travel, change her clothes, and create objects, and her apartment even has an AI “home doctor.” She never needs to leave her home, which renders her lonely, but she is still “ready for love,” as she sings about in the show’s first few scenes.
Her desperation leads her to instill the help of Susan (Miller) and her team of engineers to create a bot prototype to be Joan’s perfect mate. Joan lists the characteristics she wants in her perfect mate, and he will be delivered to Joan in just a few short weeks. Songs including “We Built a Heart” and “Designing Them” personify the major inquiry throughout The Perfect Mate: can love be manufactured? Chaos, frustration, angst, and humor ensue as Joan thinks she is getting what she wants in her “perfect” bot.
The ensemble cast swaps roles effortlessly, but Hurlbert’s vocal prowess, specifically her upper register, shines throughout the show, especially in the number “Love’s Not Real?” Nicholas’s character acting and pristine vocal tone complement Hurlbert’s talents as he attempts to win her heart as several different perfectly portrayed mates. Comedic timing and clever humor prove how almost nothing in a virtual space is what it appears to be – not even the bag labeled “carrot, apple, butter sticks.”
The Perfect Mate offers non-stop, catchy musical numbers but also makes you think about what “perfection” really is. Towards the show’s end, love is described as a “spark where you hit a high that you cannot describe.” This type of feeling is unique and can certainly not be manufactured. No matter how much time we spend on social media or even tracking Taylor Swift’s jet en route to the Superbowl, humans are inevitably too complex and flawed to thrive in a manufactured relationship.
The ensemble’s talent and Lipton and Rossmer’s clever book and lyrics highlight how human imperfections make us perfect. Whether or not we progress to a point where we can take a virtual vacation in the metaverse or create a human bot, love will never be artificial.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
The World Premiere of Pittsburgh CLO’s The Perfecty Mate at the Greer Cabaret Theater has performances from February 02 – March 17, 2024.
More information, Cast and Creative List, and the Show Program along with tickets are available at: https://www.pittsburghclo.org/shows/the-perfect-mate
Categories: Arts and Ideas, Reviews
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