Love in a Cold Climate: Almost Maine at the Provincetown Theater

There’s something I’d forgotten, swept up as I’ve been in the shock and fear of the last couple of weeks, when I’ve looked askance at my fellow Americans and felt I have nothing in common with many of them… and what I’d forgotten is the strength, resilience, and joy that comes from this community.

That was more than apparent on the opening night of John Cariani’s Almost, Maine, at the Provincetown Theater. Not only was the cast chock-a-block with people I have known and cared about for years, but the audience, too, came together over this series of sweet vignettes with an almost palpable sigh of relief and contentment. The chaos may rage outside: but here, for the space of a couple of hours, we are safe and well.

The play is a series of nine stories that take place in the same almost-town (Almost, Maine), and are told by a cast of 18 actors. Together they provide a snapshot of nearly every aspect of human relationships, from new love to the end of love, from the delight of discovery to the sadness of lost opportunities, and manage to create out of it all a Valentine of sorts: it’s a love story encompassing all love stories.

In this town, everything is real… until it isn’t. Each vignette is loosely connected to the others, so there’s a thread running through them all, a thread of community and understanding and a spark of magic. The Northern Lights pulsate in the background, specifically interwoven with one of the stories, but present in all of them.

From the broken heart carried around in a paper bag (“I’m a repairman,” offers a character; “I can fix it”) to the notebook containing lists of what can be harmful and what one should fear; from the delivery of four enormous bags filled with “all the love you gave me, and I want mine back, too” to the sadness of being left behind (“I’m glad you got found”); from a side-splittingly funny arctic striptease to pitching a tent in someone’s yard (a brochure told her “people in Maine wouldn’t mind”), the stories will enchant, amuse, and touch everyone.

These people are falling—falling in love, falling off furniture, falling away—and in many instances this involves literal falls, clever one-liners, and silences between words that speak volumes. One of the play’s strengths is that all the stories, and the emotions they carry, are shot through with a gentle, almost self-deprecating humor, and director David Drake’s cast and crew completely deliver.

Ellen Rousseau has created a clever and versatile “tiny house” kind of staging, where one building accommodates itself to multiple uses. It’s not center-stage, however; the center and the scenery and the focus throughout the stories is the aurora borealis, lending a backdrop of magic and beauty to contrast with the very cold-country-rural clothing (one has to think Thom Markee had fun costuming the cast) worn by the characters, along with the fairly mundane lives they lead.

What can be said about the 18 actors is that they’re all top-notch. Every one of them, whether new to the stage—as is the case with a few—or recognizable from myriad other Provincetown Theater and Outer Cape venues, felt authentic and real. Whether finding love or losing it or just taking a look at what it is, they make their characters feel familiar to the audience, intimate portraits of people who live, like us, in small towns. Thanks to Drake’s deft direction, they all allow Cariani’s words to breathe, to allow for silences and pauses, to be spoken as if for the very first time.

This is an amazing end to the season, a play that has the power to enchant, to speak of inner truths and hidden feelings, and—through them—to heal. This production of Almost, Maine, coming as it does at a time of pain and division, speaks wisely of what is really in our hearts. Go see it. Go listen to these voices. Go experience these emotions. It will do us all great good.

review by Jeannette de Beauvoir

photos by Bob Tucker/Focalpoint

Almost, Maine at the Provincetown Theater through December 8: provincetowntheater.org