Theatre review: Already Perfect

It's not explicitly described as an autobiographical show, but Levi Kreis (book, music and lyrics) and Dave Solomon's (additional book and direction) musical Already Perfect stars its Tony Award-winning actor/musician co-creator Levi Kreis, as a Tony Award-winning actor/musician called Levi Kreis, whose boyfriend dumps him by text, apparently because he can't handle his HIV+ status. As a result Levi has a bad matinée and reaches straight for the crystal meth wow that escalated quickly. He does call his Narcotics Anonymous sponsor first and Ben (Yiftach 'Iffy' Mizrahi) arrives in time to stop him from relapsing. As they're in a Broadway dressing room, Ben suggests they use the magic of Dame Theatre to conjure up his younger self so he can confront the things he did back when his name was Matthew (Killian Thomas Lefevre.)

He does this through composing new songs, the best of which have suggestions of the gospel music he performed in a highly religious childhood that was derailed when he started to realise he was gay.

The idea that Levi views Matthew as a completely separate person who is to blame for everything that's gone wrong in his older self's life is an unusual but potentially interesting one, and it does seem to be coming to a specific point with the revelation that Matthew willingly put himself through six years of "pray the gay away" conversion therapy. I could kind of go along with the premise that this specific act of self-harm is an act of betrayal the adult has disassociated from, but we don't find out too much about these years before we move on.

Matthew is essentially disowned by his family when he comes out, and while his ways of coping aren't always the wisest he's in a pretty desperate situation with few options: I guess I found the harshness with which Levi has himself disowned Matthew a pretty extreme coping strategy, and wanted it to make more sense than it did, especially when the younger version we meet is a cocky but essentially likeable twink who never invites the vitriol he gets.

While there's a few decent songs, Kreis largely seems to be writing music for the soundtrack of a John Hughes movie so there's a dated sound that doesn't quite feel like deliberate pastiche. The book is the biggest problem though, never really coming to life, and a charitable way of looking at the dialogue would be to say much of it has the cadence of a joke.

Ben as a character barely feels like any thought has been put into him at all, other than as a third body to play various roles from Levi's past; and while I admittedly don't know much about Narcotics Anonymous, it seems unlikely to me that they would approve of assigning someone a sponsor with whom they had a previous relationship, especially when that relationship was "dealer/client." Ultimately its autobiographical feel means Already Perfect gives the impression that its creation was a genuinely therapeutic process, and for a certain kind of earnest audience that will be enough. For me, I'm not convinced that process has really made it coherently, or particularly interestingly, to the stage.

Already Perfect by Levi Kreis and Dave Solomon is booking until the 15th of February at the King's Head Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith.