Courtesy of Mark Gluckman Samantha Mills, Kara Shaw and Mercy Malik, from left, visit a karaoke bar and belt out "Message to Michael" in "Love Sweet Love."

Pop music was forever changed in 1957 when composer Burt Bacharach met lyricist Hal David.

The pair quickly scored a hit that year by topping the country music charts with "The Story of My Life," sung by Marty Robbins.

Two decades later, the duo of Bacharach and David had racked up more than 50 Top 40 hits and a canon of more than 500, many of which are frequently revised by today's top performers.

Now, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their famed collaboration, Theater League presents "Love Sweet Love," a new musical featuring 31 Bacharach-David classics, including "What the World Needs Now," "Close to You," "The Look of Love," "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," "Walk on By," "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" and "Alfie." The show opens Tuesday and will run through Dec. 9 at Civic Art Plaza in Thousand Oaks.

Writer C. Ben Wolfe took the songs and weaved them into a tale of women searching for love in contemporary Los Angeles. According to Wolfe, there isn't so much a book as three plot lines paying homage to Valentine's Day that are built entirely around the songs instead of dialogue.

"Hal David does a great job of telling the story, as much as songs written for a musical, although with his words we could have gone 100 different ways with it," Wolfe said. "It was important to me that we keep the stories contemporary."

One 21st-century element that Wolfe injected is e-mail, which is how Amy (Alaine Kashian) meets prospective love interest Norman (Matthew Patrick Davis). During their online exchanges, they discover both like the Los Angeles Lakers, which gives Norman the opportunity to sing "She Likes Basketball," a song from the 1968 Bacharach-David musical "Promises, Promises."

Amy and Norman then decide to meet up at Love, a karaoke bar that serves as a backdrop for all three stories.

"We used the karaoke bar to allow us to include some songs that didn't quite fit in, including The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,'" Wolfe said.

Another woman who frequents Love is Gwen, who is in a wheelchair after an accident that killed her husband. Alone and lonely, Gwen meets Julio, who doesn't speak English well, but there's a potential connection.

The final take on romance is a bit stickier. It involves a man, his wife — and another woman.

Wolfe could have used any of the songs from the Bacharach-David songbook, but he chose to stick with the hits.

"We wanted this to be the kind of show where audiences walked in humming the tunes," he explained. "We couldn't fit all of them, but fans should know them all, and we made sure to keep them sounding the same by not using different orchestrations."

While Wolfe was given free reign to pick the songs and develop the show, he was required to have the book approved by both Bacharach and David.

"We never had any problems," he said, "and Hal David even came to an early reading. I was nervous, but he gave some great advice and we implemented his ideas right away.

"I think we have something special," Wolfe continued. "With Burt Bacharach's complex, incredible music and Hal David's lyrics, it's hard to go wrong."

On the Net:

www.lovesweetlovethemusical.com.