Allan Appel Photo
Jenny Schuck as Glory and Christian Shaboo as East in “Her Heart,” Almost, Maine’s first tale.
A literal broken heart in a brown lunch bag clatters when shaken. Inside duffel bags, all the love you’ve given look like piles of red clothing stuffed inside large laundry sacks.
The New Haven Theater Company has added those items to the antiques and vintage clothing world of the English Building market on Chapel Street.
Mallory Pellegrino as Ginette and Erich Greene as Pete cuddling up, maybe, in the prologue.
That’s where the NHTC’s Almost, Maine, its newest production, by playwright John Cariani, opens Thursday.
The play, an affecting charm bracelet of eight vignettes about love, runs through Saturday this week and Thursday through Saturday next week, with all shows beginning at 8 p.m.
In September the company mounted its first signature site-specific show in the antique venue with a well-received production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.
This production utilizes fewer chairs and other items happily loaned by Carol Orr, the market’s proprietor.
That’s because Almost, Maine takes place in a contemporary off-the-beaten path northern Maine town where people are always wrapped up in parkas, scarves, and hats to keep the cold away.
Still Almost, Maine—almost because it’s not organized enough to be a town on a real map — and Grovers Corners share elements of the magical or mystical. Director Margaret Mann said those parallels enhance the truths of the play.
Mann is making her directing debut with NHTC, teaming with co-director Megan Chenot. “We bonded in Our Town,” she said.
“We wanted to do something to keep the bonding” going, she added, as she sprinkled a layer of almost snow Wednesday night before the company began its final dress rehearsal.
Cariani’s play is one of the most frequently produced for young people in high schools in America. Its interconnected stories show people falling in love, out of love, and even off the map of love. It is suffused with sweetness that’s never cloying because it’s rooted in the truth of human relationships, And there’s always hope.
Moreover, each scene, while not cascading and building to a traditional play-building momentum, is niftily constructed.
Take a scene involving Peter Chenot’s Jimmy (pictured), for instance. He’s a lonely guy on his fourth or fifth Bud sitting alone in at a table in the isolated back room of the town’s main watering hole, the Moose Paddy. He sees his old girlfriend Sandrine (played by Anna Klein). He’s desperate to have her back. While we sense their attraction still, halfway through the scene Sandrine says she can’t linger: She’s at the restaurant for her bachelorette party; she’s marrying tomorrow.
As Jimmy’s about to raise his arm to order another round from the waitress, Sandrine sees a tattoo on his arm, where Jimmy memorialized her loss. She’s torn. She goes to her betrothed nevertheless.
Not all is lost, because the tattoo happens to be the name of the waitress who’s been serving him beers. They strike up a conversation; love can’t be too far off even for this loner.
NHTC’s Almost, Maine makes you feel rightly thankful for your life, however trying and it might sometimes get. Hang in there, says this play. You’re almost there.
Other performers in the show and not mentioned above include Steve Scarpa and Deena Nicol.
NHTC invites theatergoers to bring new or gently used winter clothing, which will be donated to a local charity; if you bring unopened cat food and clean blankets and towels, they will be donated to a second beneficiary of the play, the Purr Project of New Haven.
