WHS drama examines love in production of 'Almost, Maine'

One of the most popular dramatic productions of the last decade, John Cariani’s “Almost, Maine” will be staged at the Whitefish Performing Arts Center Dec. 3-5, performed by the Whitefish High School Drama Department. The show’s curtain rises at 8 p.m.

“Almost, Maine” has thrilled audiences throughout the country since its Off-Broadway debut in 2004. Set in a fictionalized community with plenty of small-town charm, the play examines love through nine interconnected vignettes, each portraying ordinary people at the height of emotional crisis. Through these moments, varying from serious to absurd, these characters experience uneasy change.

Taking place on a single night, while the northern lights float magically overhead, the play offers viewers a sense of love’s uncanny mystery, with the WHS drama team threading magic, compassion and humor through Cariani’s words.

Bookending the play is the story of Pete (Eric Holdhusen) and Ginette (Bergen Carloss), a young couple who discover how moments of closeness can revolve in a flash to their opposites. In the play’s first scene, “Her Heart,” East (Zach Meadows) wakes in the middle of the night to find a stranger (Makkie Haller) camped out in his backyard, her broken heart clutched tightly in arm. Offering to repair his guest’s heart, East may commit to more than he bargained for.

In “Sad and Glad,” the play’s second scene, love-struck Jimmy (Sam Benkelman) plays catch up with an old friend (Naya Brigette), still scarred by lost love. Luckily, a plucky waitress (Jade Greenberg) may offer what he needs to get on with his life. In “This Hurts,” Marvalyn (Myah Strauser) shows Steve (Hunter Cripe) that love is best felt wholeheartedly, for either good or bad.

Act 1 concludes with “Getting It Back,” in which Gayle (Michaela McDowell) and Lendall (Zach Ade) have had it with their stagnant relationship, piling on stage all the love they’ve given each other, hoping to make a clean break.

The second act opens with “They Fell,” in which Randy (Ben Hirsch) and Chad (Che Roussel) shed macho facades in favor of honest confession, literalizing the process of “falling in love” as they do so. Next, “Where It Went” dramatizes the moment Phil (Hunter Cripe) and Marci (Ella Greenberg) realize they’ve both checked out of their relationship. In “The Story of Hope,” Hope (Tavia Wood) finds herself at the doorstep of a man (Zach Ade) who may hold the key to her happiness, if she’s not too late. The play’s final scene, “Seeing the Thing,” offers the most uplifting climax of the play’s nine short vignettes, as Rhonda (Saige Perchy) and Dave (Sam Benkelman) discover the joy and comfort of mutual passion.

Cariani’s play offers both heartwarming and complex scenarios, with an emotional range from slap-stick comedy to tender pathos. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that “...the sentimental person thinks things will last — the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.” In the playwright’s own words, “‘Almost, Maine’ is for romantics — not for sentimentalists.”

Like night skies enraptured by the Northern Lights, love is, after all, multi-hued and all-too fleeting.

Almost, Maine is directed by head drama coach Kelliann Blackburn and assistant coach Zach Duval. The play is entirely student-run, with multiple scene changes and evocative special effects.