Beau Meyer
Christian Stevenson and Alexandria Chapes
University Theatre has joined thousands of other theaters across the country, performing a series of quirky love stories called Almost, Maine. The cast of four UW students (Erik Bergeson, Alexandria Chapes, Jessie Reynolds, and Christian Stevenson) plays nearly two dozen characters in a series of encounters that all take place on a Friday night in the middle of winter in rural Maine.
Over the course of 10 short vignettes, we meet people in mourning, falling in and out of love, confronting heartbreak, surprised by new possibilities, and discovering parts of themselves that they didn’t know existed. Directed by UW theater professor David Furumoto, it’s a pleasant — if unseasonable — look at relationships and critical turning points.
Almost, Maine, which runs through June 25 in the Mitchell Theatre, is a love letter to the remote real-life Maine town of Presque Isle, where playwright John Cariani grew up. Less than 20 miles from the Canadian border, its name is literally translated from French as “almost an island,” which is a poignant and fitting description for the characters we meet throughout the play. Like the cast of characters who inhabit Garrison Keillor’s famous Minnesota hamlet Lake Wobegon, the people of fictional Almost are immediately identifiable to audience members who grew up — or spent time in — small, rural towns where everyone knows everyone else, and people’s lives are interconnected by default.
With the exception of the prologue and the epilogue, each scene focuses on different people — a bride at her bachelorette party, a man presenting a friend with a piece of abstract art, a woman trespassing in a stranger’s backyard in order to see the Northern Lights, and a woman returning to her roots to find an old high school boyfriend. Each scene is played with the earnestness and charming lack of sophistication/snark that usually separate the country mice from their city cousins. Unfortunately, the characters aren’t terribly distinct — their costumes simply morph from one plaid shirt, winter coat and scarf to another, to let the viewer know that the stories are self-contained.
The standout scene of the evening was “They Fell,” featuring Stevenson and Bergeson as two buddies comparing horrific dating stories over cans of beer. By contrasting their experiences, they realize the depth of their own relationship in a way that is ridiculous, lovely and profound.
Originally written as individual 10-minute plays performed in sketch comedy evenings in New York, director Gabe Barre convinced Cariani to combine the scenes into a larger play. As a result, each mini-drama is well structured, introducing the characters and conflict quickly and ending each piece with a clever twist and often a bit of magical realism. Set against Gail Brassard’s beautiful backdrop of a snowy sunset, complete with shooting stars and the Northern Lights, it’s a bittersweet panorama for people not so different from us, reaching out into a cold winter night and hoping for connection.