Musical comedy in Woodland is described as ‘Seinfeld set to music’

He likes sports. He likes violent action movies. He likes to boast. Why? He’s a guy.

She wants a guy, badly. But this guy, so deep into sports and action movies and boasting? Fortunately, he falls apart and weeps like a baby during the chick flick she dragged him to. He’ll do, she figures.

The musical comedy “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” opening tonight at the Love Street Playhouse in Woodland, isn’t exactly the cutting edge of non-stereotypical thinking about gender. Its insecure men puff themselves up and think they’re impressing women with stories of golfing heroics; its desperate women pretend to listen while wondering what happened to their standards, and whether they should have gone lesbian.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The ground-breaking TV comedy “Seinfeld” was still in production when “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” opened in 1996 (and went on to run for a whopping 5,003 performances across 12 years, making it the second-biggest Off-Broadway smash ever). “Seinfeld” famously claimed to be about “nothing,” but that’s a joke too; it actually was a brilliant dive into the goofy depths of human idiosyncracy — absurd, hilarious and embarrassingly universal.

“I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” is often described as “‘Seinfeld’ set to music.” A zany, slightly surreal, life-spanning series of vignettes about romance, love and marriage, it probes the gap between the private dreams we cherish and the inevitable compromises we make. In one early scene, two busy professionals with no time to waste keep agreeing to skip ahead and consider this first date their second — no, make that their third — first sex, first argument — until the whole span of their relationship is over before it even began.

In the show’s very beginning — in The Beginning — God creates man and woman, and man asks woman out on a date, and woman responds: “OK, how ’bout this: We get married, you vow your eternal love for me, I expel a bunch of miniature humans who are totally dependent on us for 18 years, you get a job, stay home weekends, and you never see another woman naked for the rest of your life.”

The revelations in “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” often step over the line from silly to poignant. A long-married man sings about his endless love for his wife, against all odds; a divorced mother dipping her toe into “video dating” means to be alluring in front of the camera, but her broken heart keeps getting in the way. Underlying all the crazy comedy is plenty of tender truth.

“Video dating” underlines that this script is about a generation old. Nobody is chatting via Facebook or swiping along Tinder. What they are doing — and this seems extremely Seinfeldian — is signing legal contracts that specify both lovemaking activities and monetary penalties for failing to provide satisfaction.

(While there’s virtually no “dirty” language, Love Street warns that the show is not appropriate for anyone younger than high school age. Today’s middle schoolers are vastly more sophisticated than they used to be, but high school and up is still probably a reasonable guideline. Nobody younger than age 5 will be admitted, Love Street says.)

The show features a cast of four playing multiple roles in a series of loosely related scenes: Wayne Yancey and Zak Campbell of Vancouver, Tracy Sacdalan of Portland and Bethany Pithan of Longview. Pithan is the director and the musical director is Katherine Sizemore of Longview. Merry Jansen is the accompanist.