Syracuse Stage’s latest production, ‘Almost, Maine,’ bores from beginning to end. From the repetitive dialogue to tired jokes, the show is about as entertaining as watching a bucket of ice melt. Actually, that bucket of ice wouldn’t be able to spout corny clichés, so that would probably facilitate a more enjoyable evening.

John Cariani, best remembered as Julian Beck on the show ‘Law & Order,’ wrote the present-day play in 2004. That same year, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ named it one of the best plays of the year, leading to a 2006 off-Broadway opening.

Strange then, that the biggest problem the show has is the overall concept. The theater bills the show as ‘a funny Valentine of a play that will make you smile with your heart.’ And yes, the show is filled with nauseating lines, too.

The story takes place in a tiny town in Maine called Almost — named for the fact that it’s almost a city, but the townspeople there never got around to organizing it. The show is a series of vignettes featuring the simultaneous lives of eight couples at 9 p.m. one winter evening. The individual couples’ interactions stand alone as short stories and the tales rarely interweave. Theoretically, the stories all come together with the arcing theme of love’s topsy-turvy journey. Emphasis on ‘theoretically.’

In reality, each story is more painful than the preceding one. Each lasts around 20 minutes and typically centers around some kind of cutesy play-on-words. For example, there’s the man who continuously falls down on the ground because he’s falling in love. Then there’s the woman who’s carrying bags of ‘all the love you gave to me.’ The quirky clichés could have been cute had they not been repeated so often throughout each segment.

An incredibly awkward feeling plagues the play every few minutes, after a joke falls flat and the audience doesn’t respond. At least the elderly audience members seemed to be chuckling.

Each of the production’s four actors plays a number of roles, which makes for an interesting dynamic. The two female actors, Alexis McGuinness and Regan Thompson, produce different characters with unique voices and physical choices that make them more believable. The men, David Mason and Patrick Noonan, however, have much less distinct characters, often blending the same physicality and vocal inflections for each character they play.

Worst of all, the amount of pauses in the dialogue throughout the show is almost unbearable. It’s almost as if the inhabitants of Almost are incapable of responding to one another without waiting 10 seconds to speak. Sure, pauses can be great for dramatic effect, but when the actors strive for dramatic effect every other line, there’s something wrong.

For its part, the scenery is quaint. A snowy backdrop remains throughout the show with minimal set pieces. But even the scenery has cause for concern — for some unexplained reason, the trees in the background are moved a little farther offstage between each scene. Perhaps they were trying to escape the misery that was ‘Almost, Maine.’

gmillerj@syr.edu

Published on April 3, 2010 at 12:00 pm