World of dating fodder for humorous MCA show

Ever dread a first date? Ever dread a second date? A third? Well, why not skip right ahead to the fourth — or, for that matter, the first fight, or the breakup, or the bump-into a year later when you can wax nostalgic with the line: We were good together, weren’t we?

If you know this singles territory, then the zany off-Broadway show “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” which a touring company performed Saturday at the Maine Center for the Arts, is a madcap brush with the nuts (as in “crazies”) and bolts (as in “I’m outta here!”) of love. A send-up of dating, mating and marriage rituals, the musical revue combines Sondheim-esque cleverness with “Love, American Style” sexiness for a laugh-a-minute comedy.

Written by Joe DiPietro with music by Jimmy Roberts, the show has been a fixture off-Broadway for several years. As with DiPietro’s other off-Broadway hit, “Over the River and Through the Woods,” “I Love You” digs into the obvious about American culture and transforms it into smart and sassy entertainment.

Certainly, the nearly full house on Saturday didn’t have to look far to recognize the delightfully dicey world of boy-meets-girl. With very few props, a sparse stage, and the expert accompaniment of onstage pianist and music director Catherine Stornetta, the cast proved that a touring production doesn’t have to be as shallow as a one-night stand.

In the song called “Waiting,” a wife asks her couch-potato husband how much time is left in the game. Thirty-two seconds, he answers. “Is that actual time or football time?” she retorts — and the familiarity of the scene could make nearly any couple smile. While that conversation continues, another actor complains about shopping with his wife (“We came to buy shoes,” he laments, his hands laden with Macy’s bags). At the same time, a fourth actor complains about waiting in line to use the women’s room. (“I have to pee and I’m pissed,” she screams.)

A favorite of the evening was a skit in which the cast, playing a fussy family traveling to a dinner party, navigated the stage in chairs on rollers. “On the highway of love,” the father sang, “you’re driving me crazy.”

So it’s not cutting-edge humor, but it’s all such good fun, the type you like to have after the kids have gone to bed and you can cut loose with silly adult banter. There’s no guessing why this witty show has been so popular. With pieces such as “Why? ‘Cause I’m a Guy,” “A Stud and a Babe,” and “Marriage Tango,” it taps into insecurities and desires — and the lengths to which lonely, exhausted, disenchanted people are willing to go for love.

The members of this extraordinary four-person cast — Mylinda Hull, Lance Roberts, Lance Raben and Jennifer Simard — had it all right at their professional fingertips. While they slipped in and out of costumes and personalities with elegance and spunk, plus had alacritous comic timing, they could also carry a poignant moment to its most dramatic effect. Simard excelled with particular memorability here in the recording session for the first dating video of Rose Ritz, a divorced mother whose disillusionment pulled on the heart strings of anyone who has ever been left behind (and in Rose’s case, for a considerably larger, older woman with a bad hip).

The final message of this vervy show goes something like this: Go forth with joy to find someone you love, someone you think is perfect, and spend the rest of your life trying to change him or her. “Keeping coming back,” the final chorus encourages. It’s a message for the ages, but also an appropriate ending for a show that, itself, keeps rolling as a success.