Few things are harder to talk about than love, mostly because it’s been talked about so often and for so long that nearly every new attempt just comes off as passé. Love as a concept is simultaneously so nuanced that it defies a complete articulation, and so commonplace that we can’t help but try anyway. When done wrong, these love stories come off as cheesy and contrived; when done right, however, they can scratch at something beautiful, inspiring, and even painfully genuine.

Stages of Love, the Ateneo Blue Repertory’s closing production for the school year, falls squarely in the latter.

A commemoration of the stage play’s 10th anniversary, this production of Stages of Love feels as if it were a more recent creation, radiating with a perceptive understanding of this modern phenomenon of love. Unfolding in a series of intertwined vignettes set at a coffee shop, the musical presents love in its many variations—infatuation, unrequited love, meet cutes, and the like—with a sharp eye for humor and a dead aim at the heart.

As is par for the course with BlueRep’s season closers, the cast features some of the company’s finest performers—and everyone delivers. The song selection—an eclectic collection of mash-ups and medleys—is wonderfully curated, and the cast launches into them with heart and gusto. There’s hardly a weak link among them, and although there are occasions where the vocals are just a tad off, it’s by and large an unimpeachable ensemble effort.

This excellence extends beyond the cast, though. Directors Andrei Pamintuan and Boo Gabunada do a top-notch job managing all the moving parts, and Kayla Teodoro’s Friends-esque set design creates an intimate atmosphere inside the close-knit confines of the Black Box Theatre. Chab Ocampo’s costuming is impeccable in its authentic simplicity. The lighting is appropriate without being ostentatious, and complements the setting perfectly.

While it may not have the thematic heft or frenetic energy of past BlueRep closers such as Toilet or In the Heights, Stages of Love makes up for its relative lightness by being so persistently charming and unabashedly genuine that you can’t help but fall in love with it—no pun intended. Through this handful of pocket romances, stitched together by a café and their shared sense of battered idealism, the musical fashions an image of love that evolves in fits and spurts—just like real life.

Ultimately, Stages of Love is the best kind of love story: The kind that might even get you believing in that sort of thing again.

Final Rating: 4/5

Pros: Cast was superb, set design was appropriately cute, technical aspects were clean, costuming was on-point

Cons: Occasional slip-ups by the cast, occasional moments of too much going on onstage