Almost, Maine

Love is tough.  Finding it, declaring it, keeping it, losing it.  Set in the fictitious snow-bound small town of ‘Almost’in the north-eastern US state of Maine on a Friday night, John Cariani’s play in nine parts depicts lovelorn or love-lost inhabitants as they hit turning points in their lives – and it’s sweet, bitter, funny and sometimes just a little too cute and corny.  

There are excursions into the surreal – or ‘magic realism’, if you like.  A woman (Ruby Duncan) delivers back to her partner (Thomas Caine) all the love he’s ever given her – in sacks.  Another woman (Emily Joy) walks all the way around the world to prove her love and to join her lover (Mr Caine again) - on his other side.  Relationships are riven with conflict – some sweetly or comically resolved, others leave an irreparable breach.  But if hearts are broken, there is no tissue damage and all but two of the two-hander stories have happy endings – often of the ‘suddenly, it just happened, and I had to kiss you’ variety. 

Experienced director Peter Blackburn here directs – it must be said – an inexperienced cast of varying abilities – and his nine actors get to play twenty characters.  Wisely, Mr Blackburn blocks in as much well-staged movement as possible and gets his cast to play it straight, as if anything out of the ordinary were perfectly ordinary and he gets plenty of laughs as a result.

In the second play, ‘Her Heart’, a grieving woman, Glory (Sophie Muckart) comes north to see the Northern Lights, carrying her broken heart in a paper bag, and innocently camps in the yard of lonely repairman, East (Jacob Ehlefeldt).  Spontaneous kisses ensue. 

By contrast, in ‘Sad and Glad’, Sandrine (Emily Joy) runs into ex-lover Jimmy (Timothy Smith) and wishes she hadn’t.  Mr Smith is a stand-out in this ensemble – he’s strong and definite - both here and as ‘Phil’ in ‘Where It Went’ with Sophie Muckart (again and very good).  Although it’s a contrivance – a missing shoe – that stops a married couple from leaving the pond where they’ve been skating – the fight that ensues is real and painful.  Vivian Nguyen is awkward in the rather silly ‘This Hurts’ with Taylor Smith-Morvell, but she reveals a talent for physical comedy in ‘Seeing the Thing’ where ‘just friends’ Rhonda and Dave (Jacob Ehlefeldt) finally have to face it that they are… yes, in love.  The two of them stripping off layer after layer of their winter woollies is a comedy highlight.  Meanwhile, Mr Smith-Morvell gets a better chance in ‘They Fell’ where he and Mr Ehlefeldt, both disappointed in love, realise that the person they really love is… each other.

This is an American play with American dialogue, but the cast speak with Australian accents throughout.  Most people won’t be too fussed at that (the situations, bizarre or not, are ‘universal’), but the cadences and rhythms are American and at times the actors are let down.  Vivian Powell’s one appearance as ‘Hope’ in ‘Story of Hope’ is marred when her big speech (one of the better passages of writing here) is delivered with sincerity but missing that particular American plangency.  And she has to play against Thomas Caine, who’s fine in his other two roles, but here just too young for this one, and we can’t suspend our disbelief that far.

Between the Buildings is a newly formed company and this is their first outing.  It’s low rent and Abbie-Lea Hough’s design is minimal.  But it’s clear why Almost, Maine – apparently a very popular play in the US with professional and amateur theatre companies – was chosen.  It’s a good showcase for the cast’s abilities.  The play itself, though saccharine at times and a bit too much like acting exercises, is true (enough) to life and continually entertaining. 

Michael Brindley