In Door County, lonely hearts seek connection
Among the thousands of plays I’ve seen, I can’t ever recall attending one quite like Duncan Macmillan’s “Every Brilliant Thing,” a British import now receiving its first Wisconsin production, courtesy of Third Avenue Playhouse in Sturgeon Bay.
Dan Klarer is ostensibly the only actor in director Robert Boles’ cast, but don’t let the playbill fool you. In this 80-minute, intermission-free piece, the lights never go down and therefore remain trained on the audience, placed on stage and in TAP’s traditional seating area to provide the semblance of an in-the-round format.
While Klarer does the heavy lifting, several audience members help him, impersonating key people in the narrator’s life.
Many more will read from numbered slips of paper they’ve been handed when entering the theater; each such slip contains one of the many “brilliant things” on an ever-lengthening list, through which the narrator desperately urges his suicidal, never-seen mother to stay alive.
The nature of those brilliant things changes as the narrator does, moving from a boy who was 7 when his mother first tried to kill herself to a full-fledged adult. The first item on the list is “ice cream.” Later ones include “falling in love” and “sex.”
It’s neither as gimmicky nor as sentimental as it may sound. And while you may generally hate audience participation — I sure do — here it’s not only necessary but also moving in driving home that each of us is brilliant and none of us is alone. Speaking the narrator’s list as he tells us about his life, we come to embody that list; each of our voices adds to the many reasons for living.
Klarer channels the considerable humor in Macmillan’s script, even as the narrator predicts he’ll never be fully joyful. Macmillan doesn’t pretend that life is a picnic; the narrator insists that anyone reaching old age without having once felt “crushingly depressed” probably hasn’t been paying attention. All the more impressive that this play makes a brilliant case for choosing life.
Finding Love in Maine
The night after watching “Every Brilliant Thing,” I drove to Fish Creek to catch Peninsula Players Theatre’s justopened production of John Cariani’s “Almost, Maine,” which plays in a different and lighter key while touching on some similar themes.
They’re all sounded in this solid production by director Patrick New’s quartet of actors (Erica Elam, Joe Foust, Matt Holzfeind and Karen Janes Woditsch), who honor Cariani’s plea that actors play for keeps when embodying the 19 lonely souls searching for love in the play’s nine vignettes.
With its magical realism, sometimes overly obvious metaphors and insistence that love is always in the air, the characters in “Almost, Maine” can easily play as caricatures, in scenes so sweet they cloy.
But when done right — think the fabulous Milwaukee Repertory Theater production in 2010 — “Maine” confirms what Cariani writes and “Every Brilliant Thing” suggests: “Sadness and pain are the funniest things in the world.”
This is a very funny “Maine,” but one also feels for each of these people — living lives they desperately want to share but trapped within the prison house of the self. As the play’s title suggests, they’re often almost but not quite able to escape; in the darker vignettes, they either never get out of their shell or escape too late.
But there’s also the woman who gives her broken heart to a man who wants to fix it. Two versions of best friends who finally admit they’ve fallen in love. A sleeping giant named Steve (Foust) who could never feel pain, until he’s awakened by a kiss.
Even when characters like Steve insist they don’t hurt, actors like Foust suggest that they do; this cast doesn’t underestimate all we must overcome before awakening to a sense of our best selves. But awaken these characters do, in a production that might readily find a home on any list of the brilliant things providing reason to be alive.
“Every Brilliant Thing” continues through Oct. 15 at Third Avenue Playhouse, 239 N. 3rd Ave., Sturgeon Bay. For tickets, visit thirdavenueplayhouse.com. “Almost Maine” continues through Oct. 15 at Peninsula Players Theatre, 4351 Peninsula Players Road, Fish Creek. For tickets, visit peninsulaplayers.com. Read more about these productions at TapMilwaukee.com.