LOVE/SICK

It’s 7:30 on a Friday Night in June in a Big Box Store Somewhere in Suburbia

A Theater Review by Julinda D. Lewis

At: The Swift Creek Mill Theatre, 17401 U.S. Route 1, S. Chesterfield, VA 23834

Performances: May 21 – June 25, 2022

Ticket Prices: $49. $44 for seniors, students, military, and first responders.

Info: (804) 748-5203 or https://www.swiftcreekmill.com

Lovesick – adjective. in love, or missing the person one loves, so much that one is unable to act normally.

It’s spring and love is in the air – only not in the way you might expect. For LOVE/SICK John Cariani (author of Almost Maine) has constructed nine discrete tales in which love falls somewhere on a spectrum of, well, mental illness. Each ten-minute play is set “at 7:30 PM on a Friday night in June, in an alternate suburban reality.” The backdrop for this suburban reality is The Super Store – a generic mock-up of a big box store, in which some of the silhouettes on the shelves remind me of miniature tombstones.

The nine couples are portrayed by four actors who zanily and adeptly transform from character to character between scenes: costumes, hair, voices, mannerisms, posture. Before the pandemic, it was fairly unusual to see a show in which actors played multiple roles, but that seems to have become a necessary skill in the new normal we are all adapting to. Described as Almost Maine’s “darker cousin,” each Love/Sick  story line has an unexpected twist.

Among my favorites: “The Singing Telegram” man (Matt Hackman) hesitates to deliver his message because the sender is using the singing telegram to break up with his girlfriend (Katherine Wright). This is probably the saddest of the collection, while “Uh-Oh” is probably the sickest and displays the most twisted humor. In “Uh-Oh” a bored wife (also Wright) seeks to bring some excitement into her one and a half year old marriage – by fabricating a story about a research article and then assaulting her unsuspecting husband with a very real looking squirt gun.

“The Answer” starts off with a groom (Hackman) hiding in a bathroom, crying and ends on a somber note, while “Lunch and Dinner” is filled with Freudian slips of the tongue. When lawyer husband Mark (Freebourn) asks his corporate wife (Reisenfeld) what she had to eat at her business luncheon, she inadvertently responds, “sex.” And so it goes, until we come full circle ending up back at The Super Center where two exes (Hackman and Wright) are reunited and the original “Obsessive Impulsive” couple (Reisenfeld and Freebourne) bump carts again. Occasionally a profound thought punctuates the hilarity, as when Jake (Hackman) wonders why, “when you meet and fall in love and it doesn’t work out, how come we don’t call THAT destiny?”

Two monitors on either side of the stage announce the titles of the scenes while the scenery and the actors change, and Width keeps the pace and the laughs moving along with the smooth regularity of a train schedule. Of course, what makes it work, what makes it funny, is that we can recognize bits and pieces of ourselves – or our partners – in many of these characters. Have you or someone you know thought about killing their spouse – even jokingly – or considered getting back together with an ex? Still, ninety minutes without an intermission is hard on some of us with mature bones and joints that need to move periodically. Oh, and one more thing – the transition music between scenes was (perhaps intentionally?) unnecessarily irritating, but not enough so to interfere with my enjoyment of this hilarious show.

LOVE/SICK

By John Cariani

Directed by Tom Width

Cast:

PJ Freebourn

Matt Hackman

Paige Reisenfeld

Katherine Wright

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Production Team:

Directed by Tom Width

Costume Design by Maura Lynch Cravey

Lighting Design by Joe Doran

Scenic Design by  Tom Width

Technical Direction by Liz Allmon

Incidental Music by Julian Fleisher

“No Lie” composed by John Cariani

Performance Schedule:

Fridays @ 8:00PM: May 27, June 3, June 10, June 17, June 24

Saturdays @ 2:30PM: June 11, June 25

Saturdays @ 8:00PM: May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, June 25

Sundays @ 2:30 PM: June 5, June 19

Wednesdays @ 2:30 PM: June 8, June 15

Thursdays @ 8:00PM: June 16, June 23

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Tickets:

$44-49

Run Time:  Approximately 90 minutes with no intermission