Prescribed plans for wellness do not allow for love at first sight. But haven’t we all been there? Or at least seen our friends and family be there? Jumping into something when they shouldn’t based on nothing more than a glance across the Supercenter shopping aisle? Or not jumping out of something when they should have because there just wasn’t an easy way out? If you’re looking for a good evening of dark, laugh-out-loud comedy, Spotlighters Theatre has got you covered with the penultimate show of their mainstage 61st season. Love/Sick, a series of 11 vignettes strung together by playwright John Cariani (Almost, Maine), is a witty and charming, albeit dark and sometimes sad, look at the script’s namesake. While the throughline of Cariani’s first work— Almost, Maine— was the fictionally eponymous town, Love/Sick has the central throughline of the “Supercenter” a place where anything— and everything— pertaining to love can, does, and did happen. Directed Alanna Kiewe, this show is relatable and chuckle-worthy, ultimately providing a feel-good evening, even if the stories don’t all have happy endings wrapped up neatly in a ‘Supercenter’ bow.
For a show that’s meant to have a bevy of locations, Set Designer Alan Zemla keeps things functionally simple. Utilizing the support columns of Baltimore only ‘theatre-in-the-postage-stamp-square’, Zemla makes shelves for both housing interior scenes and ‘Supercenter’ style spaces. But you almost find yourself overlooking the set— certainly not for a lack of creativity or intention on Zemla’s part but rather because of the way playwright John Cariani focuses the nature of these vignettes. They really could be anywhere— a completely blank stage or on any set with furniture and you find yourself drawn into the little points of connectivity happening between the characters almost more so than observing what’s on the stage around them.
Jen Sizer’s lighting design and the audio design work of director Alanna Kiewe and Kai DonDero really draw each vignette in and out of one another. They are almost stand-alone snippets of the plays title, with that aforementioned throughline of the ‘Supercenter’ (until the final vignette which is a brilliant recap of the first ten but rendered into a vibrant and simultaneously poetic essence) and yet with Sizer’s lighting work and Kiewe & DonDero’s audio design, you get these little moments that drag one vignette in or out of the next. Immediately following “The Singing Telegram”, the actress in that vignette is just standing there dumbfounded as the scenery and the actors for the next segment move on stage around her, even jostling her out of the way— which is this flawless representation of how “the world doesn’t stop for your broken heart” and that’s augmented and executed with sound choice and the way Sizer sets the lighting here. There are moments like this between every vignette that really create a cohesivity between scenes. Sizer’s work and Kiewe & DonDero’s work don’t feel over-constructed or heavy-handed and actually create a nice balance to this production.
If there’s a problem with the production its in Alanna Kiewe’s casting choice for the ninth vignette, “Forgot.” While Kiewe stacks her cast with eight incredibly talented actors whose emotional fortitude and empathetic capacity are at the forefront of each of the other vignettes, she brings in an actor— Glen Charlow— who feels completely out of place against the other performers in this production. The vignette itself features a married couple (Charlow and Laura Weeldreyer) who start off quietly having a birthday celebration for Weeldreyer’s character only to devolve into an argument about why they haven’t yet had a baby. Kiewe’s choice to use Charlow in this vignette makes the whole segment unbelievable and unrelatable. He’s stiff, hollow, and sounds as he’s reading the script back to Weeldreyer, who is desperately exploding her heart out in this character; it’s unbalanced. And it does not read in a “the character is aloof and detached or disinterested” manner, as may have been Kiewe’s intent. Charlow ends up feeling wooden and not in an intentional fashion. This might be something one could overlook had the first eight vignettes of the play not utilized four other male actors who would have been more suitable in the role. (In this performance Kiewe has every actor except Charlow in multiple vignettes, which further begs the question why he was used at all.) In addition to the uneven performance between Charlow and Weeldreyer, because the male actor in this scene appears so much older than everyone else in the cast, it makes Weeldreyer also look too old for the conversational topic of “Forgot” to be believable.
But if Kiewe’s misstep in casting just one of eleven vignettes in Love/Sick is her biggest issue, she’s ahead of the game. (It really does make one wonder why not just stick with the eight individuals who so clearly showcase their versatility and masterful, emotional capabilities in the other ten vignettes.) The way she carefully works with Jen Sizer and Kai DonDero to use clever pop songs between each vignette, to carefully transition actors from one role to the next, often times back to back, strengthens the show. John Cariani’s work is hilarious and heartfelt, even if quite a few of the vignettes are setup as a chuckle-fest-turned-gut-punch by the time the wrap up. Kiewe has done a great job with ten of the vignettes in getting the full depth of emotions portrayed in both sides of the relationship that is on view, she keeps the pacing and shift between snippets effectively expedient, and ultimately the show has a great vibe to it. Bonus shoutout to properties & costume designer Jackie Whittington, who had so many different outfits and pieces on each of the actors that it was almost impossible to take note of them all, but they all came together impressively when in action during the performance. There should also be a bevy of praise loaded onto intimacy coordinator Kay-Megan Washington as there are quite a few vignettes that feature close touching, embraces, or kissing, all of which read with emotional authenticity and a sense of comforted ease (occasionally— like during “Obsessive Impulsive”— with great comedic impact.)
Laura Weeldreyer, who is giving a heart-bleeding performance of gut-wrenching proportions during “Forgot” is featured in two other vignettes, opposite different male performers. Seen first in “Lunch and Dinner”, which kickstarts the second act (and played opposite Andy Belt), she finds the nuanced balance of Freudian slips when stacked up against the monotony of what marriage can become if you aren’t careful. The way she gracefully slipslides through innuendo, double-entendres, and blatant metaphors is both hilarious and emotionally poignant. Weeldreyer closes the performance in “Destiny” (opposite Carlo Olivi) in an impressive feat of burbling, confused pathos. And her character, as well as Olivi’s calls to question why are only ‘good things’ particularly in life when it comes to relationships, referred to destiny and not the other way around?
Carlo Olivi, playing opposite Weeldreyer in the conclusion to Love/Sick has great reactionary responses, particularly when trying to not jump over Weeldreyer’s character in “Destiny.” You can see him in the act one conclusion, “Uh-Oh”, opposite Dominique Solomon, which is a darkly intense black comedy moment that quickly goes off the hinges. Olivi has flawless facial expression responses to Solomon’s character in this vignette and watching him go from this chuckling, aloof character to this terrified individual is very powerful. But you’ll find it difficult to keep your eyes on Olivi because of all of the chaos and unhinged emotions, gestures, and verbiage flying out of Dominique Solomon in this snippet. She masters the ‘crazy-eyes’ look with that ‘edge-of-snapping’ mental-breakdown tone that Hollywood has glorified for decades whenever a woman is about to go off the rails. Solomon, whose versatility is quite impressive, is also featured in “The Singing Telegram”, where her shrieking, shrill, and totally over-enthused character will have you squirming in your seat to get away from you (even if the foreshadowing of doom in that particularly vignette is so heavy handed you know what’s coming) until she takes the gut-punch and you can’t help but feel for her. Playing a third frazzled character, Solomon is one half of a ‘barely-functioning’ marriage in “Where Was I?” a vignette shared with Niki-Jay Johnson, where the pair play a married couple attempting to raise children where one works and one stays home. There is a visceral intensity to Solomon in this vignette that is quite relatable for anyone who has ever been in what they felt is an unevenly-footed relationship.
Niki-Jay Johnson kicks off the show with “Obsessive Impulsive”, which has to be one of the funniest vignettes featured in Love/Sick. Johnson and Will Beckstrom all but crash into one another in the ‘Supercenter’ and spend the better part of the vignette speaking in hyper-animated, flawless unison, which is even more hilarious as they try to discover one another despite speaking the exact same words at the exact same time. The frenetic energy that Johnson brings to this number is infectious and giddily shared with Beckstrom and the pair readily set a high-flying tone of the rest of the evening’s antics. You can also see Johnson in what is arguably one of the more heart-heavy vignettes, “The Answer” where she fills out a glorious wedding dress and plays opposite Andy Belt. Both she and Belt delve into the emotional gravitas of this vignette but manage to keep the humor about them, particularly in the way Johnson responds to Belt’s neurotic nervousness.
Will Beckstrom, in addition to being one half of the powerhouse that launches the show, faces off against Dominique Solomon in “The Singing Telegram”, where he’s the titular namesake of the vignette. The foreshadowing is strong with this one and you instantaneously feel bad for Beckstrom’s character (perhaps even more so for Solomon’s once it comes to an end) but also can’t help but chuckle at the efforts he puts forth in an attempt to get out of doing what he has to do. Featured again in the second act in “Chicken”, which is played opposite Gracie Sciannella, you get to watch the completely ‘out-of-left-field’ panic that gets channeled through Beckstrom’s character in a way that is both unsettling and still funny. The back and forth between he and Sciannella’s character in this vignette is particularly relatable to anyone who has ever been at different places in their relationship than that of their partner. Sciannella, who is featured in the first act in “The Two of Them” does a tremendously impressive job of expressing concerns about her character’s gender identity and how that’s going to impact her relationship/friendship with Charles Dickinson’s character.
Dickinson, who plays the ‘bruh-home-bestie-gamer-dude’ to Sciannella’s ‘tom-boy-come-gender-neutral’ is so calm in this vignette that it’s almost surreal. But it provides an excellent stillness and tranquility to Love/Sick as a whole, particularly as most of the other vignettes lack true moments of stillness, reflection, and contemplation. Dickinson flows immediately into “What!?” after leaving out of “The Two of Them”, which is a vignette played opposite Andy Belt, wherein he’s ready to initiate more in the relationship dynamic but Belt’s character has some reservations and hold-ups, which in playwright John Carini’s humorous fashion, manifest themselves physically-literally (sort of like in Almost, Maine where we keep waiting for the other shoe to drop…and then an actual shoe falls from the sky…) The pair play off one another extremely well in this vignette.
As for Andy Belt, who tackles that aforementioned literalization in “What!?”, you get a full spectrum of neurotic characters from him over the course of three vignettes. “The Answer” showcases his jittery uncertainty, particularly when it comes to relationship superstitions and “Lunch and Dinner” showcases a jealous intensity that ebbs and flows alongside confessions of his own in that vignette where he plays opposite Laura Weeldreyer.
It’s a truly touching, quite hilarious (honestly the audience was laughing out loud so frequently that you almost forget it isn’t meant to be a pure comedy) and earnest evening of solid performances with excellent topics put readily into the hands of eight talented actors who know how to finesse emotions, augment relationship calamities and earnestly delve into the narratives that John Carini has presented with Love/Sick. Absolutely a must-see, despite one-half of vignette number nine. Don’t miss your chance to laugh, feel catharsis, and relate to these wonderful performers this June at Spotlighters as they perform John Carini’s Love/Sick.
Running Time: Approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes with one intermission
Love/Sick plays through June 9th 2024 at The Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre— 817 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD. For tickets call the box office at (410) 752-1225 or purchase them online.
