A sour start finishes with thought-provoking moments

When I eat something sour, I get a sharp pain in the back of my lower jaw.  What’s really odd is that I also get this feeling when I sit through a cringe-worthy sappy love story.

The sour-jaw sensation was the culmination of my visceral experience shortly after the house lights dimmed and the actors took stage.  Right from the start I wanted to go to the Lifestyles’ editor and kick her ass for putting me on the spot to review this dribble.

But just as I was gingerly cinching my bootstraps, polishing the steel tips, and preparing for what inevitably lay ahead; a profundity struck at the end of the first vignette, set off by a bizarre literal metaphor.

The whole tone changed, and my attitude with it. I began to engage a little bit more, and I faded in and out of actually—being— the person in each of the scenes.

The feelings this play incite are powerful and seem to be based in Aristotle’s “Poetics,” for which the author has a clear mastery. The audience will believe, the “impossible (but) plausible,” before they will believe the “possible (but) implausible.”

If you don’t “get” what I’m saying, or you feel like this review is purposely vague, then it is.  If you’re expecting a critique of the stage design and the lighting and delivery from the actors, that’s not going to come from me.  I’m not a theatre major or a theatre reviewer.  I’m a just a regular dude.

If you are going to check it out because you are looking for something funny, or sweet, or whatever; you might find.  I didn’t feel any of that personally; what I felt were things that made me think. The way the play is arranged, and how the stories all seem to be interconnected was mind blowing.

So I would recommend you see “Almost, Maine,” and bring this review along with you. Read through it after you’re done, and if you don’t comprehend my words, go ahead and watch it again during another showing.

Your first reaction is going to be to cringe, but sit through the sour-jaw, and stick it out.  If you’re lucky, some bit of indescribable knowledge will strike you and a strange little epiphany will tuck itself away inside your head.

The play left me thinking as I walked out of Memorial Hall, and my hope is that it is thought provoking for you too.