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player ready...What if falling in love means the enamored literally fall? Or having a broken heart means it shatters into pieces?
Welcome to Almost, Maine.
The mythical – and mystical – town comes to life when the play of the same name opens Friday at Elgin Community College. It will be performed through May 3 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and at 3 p.m. Sundays in the SecondSpace Theatre in the college’s Arts Center.
“It’s a really beautiful, funny, touching play that’s about love in all its various stages,” director Susanne Kepley said. “Something that attracted me to the play is that the characters are very relatable. And they’re people going through things that pretty much everyone has either gone through in their own life, or watched someone else go through.
“However, it’s against a backdrop of a really magical world. In ‘Almost, Maine,’ when a heart breaks, it literally shatters into pieces and can be fixed by a repairman,” she said. “And when people fall in love, they literally fall down on the ground in love and really have a hard time getting back up because they’re so knocked off their feet by love.”
The romantic comedy is presented through a series of vignettes about relationships that are in different stages, such as someone saying, “I love you,” for the first time, or running into an ex-love.
“While, of course, every relationship doesn’t have a happy moment in it, it’s a very feel-good show. It’s a show I think people will leave very happy,” she said. “Many of the characters are very funny, and it’s also very touching because it’s dealing with love in all its stages. So it’s kind of got everything that goes along with that.”
The play features students and community members. The production is a considered a class, with the actors enrolling once cast.
“They’re so funny and talented, and have really risen to the challenge of this piece – a piece that requires them to be both honest and real, and also to give in to that non-realistic magic that weaves itself through the script,” Kepley said. “They’ve done a really, really great job.”
The stories in “Almost, Maine” are geared a little bit older, Kepley said, dealing with romantic comedy kinds of topics.
The northern Maine town is a snowy, winter wonderland where the Northern Lights – the Aurora Borealis – are producing some natural magic, she said.
The set, designed by Angelo O’Dierno, allows the lights to be visible during scene transitions, she said.
“We have these beautiful, flexible moving set pieces that are moved around by some of the cast members that are kind of magical townsfolk of Almost, Maine,” she said. “They’re doing a beautiful job of manipulating this gorgeous set and helping us create a little bit more of that magic as we transition from scene to scene.”
Sound designer Marc Beth composed original music for the production, she said.
Written by John Cariani, “Almost, Maine” premiered in Portland, Maine in 2004.
Kathy Cichon is a freelance writer.
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“Almost, Maine”
When: Friday through May 3
Where: SecondSpace Theatre at Elgin Community College, 1700 Spartan Drive, Elgin
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Tickets: $11 adults, $9 students and seniors
Information: 847 622-0300