The 1963 musical She Loves Me is a romantic tale designed to transport you back to an earlier time and place — 1934 Budapest, to be exact. It was a world where hopeful young women and young men sought romance by mailing letters in response to “lonely hearts” advertisements in the newspaper. Where workplace entanglements took place not in cold office towers but in a small perfume shop in a big city. And where antagonism can be turned into true love, helped along by small acts of common kindness and a little subterfuge.
This is the world conjured up by book writer Joe Masteroff (Cabaret) and the songwriting team of composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick (Fiorello!, Fiddler on the Roof). She Loves Me is based on Miklós László’s 1937 play Parfumerie, which was adapted for the screen three times: 1940’s The Shop Around the Corner; 1949’s In the Good Old Summertime; and 1998’s You’ve Got Mail.
The musical starts in the early summer, outside Maraczek’s Parfumerie. We are introduced to the staff (in the song “Good Morning, Good Day”): Georg Nowack (Andrew Leeds), the head clerk; sales clerks Ladislav Sipos (Brian Ray Norris), a middle-aged man with a wife and 2 children, Ilona Ritter (Kate Rockwell), a pretty, youngish blonde, and Steven Kodaly (Clyde Voce), a slick operator who thinks he’s God’s gift to women; and ambitious delivery boy Arpad Laszlo (Kennedy Kanagawa). Before they go into the shop they are joined by the owner, Mr. Maraczek (Phillip Hoffman), an older married man. After a larger than usual number of morning shoppers leave, Maraczek shows his latest product acquisition, a musical leather cigarette box, to Georg, who thinks the product won’t sell. An attractive young woman, Amalia Balash (Elena Shaddow), enters, looking for a job. She is turned down by both Georg and Maraczek, but when she sells a box to a woman shopper as a musical candy box, Maraczek hires her. Georg disparages Amalia’s attitude, while she derides him for his jealousy at her selling one of the “unsellable” boxes.
Georg reveals to Sipos that he has gotten a new letter from the woman to whom he’s been writing, but confesses they have neither described nor seen each other. Sipos encourages him to set up a face-to-face meeting. As Georg dictates his letter while he writes it, we hear Amalia singing the same letter as she reads it (“Three Letters”), and by the time the first snow falls, they have set up a dinner date. Kodaly and Ilona, who have been conducting a not-so-secret romance, are having a falling out, barely speaking to each other. Maraczek has received an anonymous letter stating that his wife is having an affair with one of the store’s clerks. Suspecting Georg, who alone among the staff has been invited to his home, Maraczek treats him with growing, barely-restrained hostility.
One early December evening, Georg and Amalia are finally to meet. Maraczek announces that everyone will have to stay late to decorate the store for Christmas. When Georg conveys Maraczek’s order to Amalia, she blames Georg for trying to sabotage her prior engagement and leaves anyway. Maraczek blames Georg for wanting to leave and letting Amalia leave, but he finally goes too far and Georg quits. Complications pile up, and the remainder of the show is dedicated to untangling them. When and how will Georg and Amalia, who we know love each other in letters, ever get past their initial impressions of each other and discover each other in real life?
Director and choreographer Denis Jones, in his Bucks County Playhouse debut, shows his facility in guiding this gem of a cast not only through their musical numbers but also in delivering their more humorous lines without overplaying them. As choreographer he creates a slapstick tour de force in the tango “A Romantic Atmosphere”, sung by the picky cafe headwaiter (Patrick Richwood) and danced as a parody of eroticism by the dubious Busboy (Nik Hagen) and the patrons (Sissy Bell, Nigel Jamal Hall, Candice Hatakeyama, Liam Johnson, and Lizz Picini). He also takes the full cast through the hilarious “Twelve Days to Christmas” as shoppers and staff move, sing, and act more frantically the closer the shopping deadline gets. The female ensemble members and Georg, Kodaly, and Sipos have their lyrics and movements entwine to full absurd effect in the first act number “Sounds While Selling”.
The fluid sets designed by Anna Louizos capture the play’s locations in Budapest — the parfumerie, Amalia’s apartment, the Cafe Imperial, even the street outside the shop, among others. The whole show is lit with charm and precision by Kirk Bookman, and the large (for Bucks County Playhouse) orchestra provides the perfect musical support for what’s happening on stage.
She Loves Me has long been a favorite show of mine. Its three appearances on Broadway prove that it has been an audience favorite over the years as well. I cannot more strongly urge you to spend a relaxing summer evening (or afternoon) in old Budapest visiting the parfumerie around the corner at She Loves Me!
She Loves Me is presented by the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, PA, through Sept. 14, 2025. For more information or to purchase tickets, go to bcptheater.org.
