Already Perfect arrives at the King’s Head Theatre trailing clouds of Tony Award glory from its writer, but the show itself never quite earns the standing ovation its creator seems to expect. This autobiographical musical from Levi Kreis – who wrote the book, music and lyrics, and stars as himself, is a curiously flat affair, rescued intermittently by three committed performers doing their level best with underpowered material.
The premise holds promise. We find Levi, a Broadway star, alone in his dressing room after a disastrous matinee, hours before his show is to be filmed for posterity. Dumped by text, tempted by drugs, he teeters on the brink until his NA sponsor Ben bursts in. What follows is a theatrical conceit in which Levi confronts his younger self, known as Matthew, and the three actors morph through dozens of characters from his past. The journey takes us from a bible-thumping Tennessee childhood through conversion therapy, expulsion from a Christian university, sex work in Los Angeles, and eventually to Broadway success.
The storytelling device is sound enough, and director Dave Solomon keeps the metatheatrical playfulness from becoming too cloying. The characters acknowledge they are in a theatre, props appear from all sorts of places when needed, and bibles literally rain down during a gospel number. Jason Ardizzone-West’s dressing room set reveals clever surprises, transforming from cramped backstage reality into fragments of memory. Ian Scott’s lighting shifts the mood efficiently between scenes.
Yet for all its theatrical trickery, Already Perfect cannot escape a fundamental problem: the songs are (with one or two exceptions) really dull. Kreis attempts a genre-spanning score that lurches between ballads, country, rock and blues without ever settling into a coherent voice. The ambition is clear – his life has been genre-fluid, so why not the music? – but the execution feels like channel-hopping rather than fusion. Worse, several numbers sound actively derivative, including one that borrows so heavily from a famous Andrew Lloyd Webber melody that you half expect a different set of lyrics to emerge. The rhymes clunk along predictably, and where the score should soar, it plods.
This matters because the show depends entirely on musical catharsis. When Kreis sits at the piano to pour out his pain, we need to feel transported. Instead, the numbers land as imitation eighties power ballads, competent but forgettable. A song about his homophobic grandfather gestures toward real emotion but never quite delivers the gut-punch it promises.
The book, co-written with Solomon, compounds matters. It races through trauma like a checklist, conversion therapy, HIV, addiction, abusive relationships, without giving any single element room to breathe. Weighty subjects are introduced then abandoned. We learn late in the piece that Ben himself once dealt crystal meth, an intriguing detail that goes nowhere. The script is often syrupy where it needs to be astringent, and the lack of an interval makes the hundred minutes feel longer than necessary.
What saves the evening from complete mediocrity is the cast. Kreis himself is an undeniably charismatic presence, and his voice – rich, warm, technically accomplished – deserves better material. When he plays the older Levi simply existing in his pain, he is genuinely affecting. The decision to have him take on other roles from his past dilutes this impact somewhat; watching him play his own mother or grandfather feels like a distraction from the emotional core.
Killian Thomas Lefevre makes a strong impression as Matthew, the younger Levi. He captures the cocky naivety of youth without sentimentalising it, and he refuses to let the character off the hook for his self-destructive choices. His vocals cut through even the weaker songs. Yiftach Mizrahi brings charm and versatility to Ben, cycling through supporting characters – the narcissistic stage mother, the sexy pastor, the conversion therapist – with evident relish. A running joke about Ben enjoying his theatrical debut provides some of the evening’s lighter moments.
Autobiographical musicals walk a fine line between confession and self-indulgence. The best transform personal specificity into universal resonance. Already Perfect never quite makes that leap. It feels less like a finished piece than a work-in-progress, a therapeutic exercise that needed several more drafts before facing an audience. The raw ingredients are present: a dramatic life story, a talented performer unafraid to expose his vulnerabilities, a creative team with evident theatrical intelligence. But the dish remains undercooked. The show asks what it takes to make peace with your own story. The answer, it seems, is rather more than this production has managed to find.