15
Oct
2008
There's an awful lot going on in the Harrison Hilltop Theatre's current presentation of the ghost story The Woman in Black - including two concurrent storylines, a wealth of exposition, a pair of actors taking on multiple roles and perspectives, and sound and lighting effects galore - and it winds up being much too much. But I'm generally happier watching a theatrical production that aims for the stars and doesn't get there than one that doesn't reach at all, so it was still easy to enjoy this wildly ambitious, if ultimately disappointing, presentation; I had just enough fun at Saturday's performance to regret not having more fun.
For romantic comedies that display a proudly eccentric or whimsical bent, it's a fine line between aw-w-w-w and u-u-u-ugh. And playwright John Cariani's Almost, Maine - a series of comically romantic vignettes that involves 19 Northeasterners in a frigid American province - seems almost designed to encourage irritated sighs and eye-rolling amongst its more jaded attendees. It's the sort of literal-minded fantasy in which one character carries the remnants of her broken heart in her purse, and another returns to her boyfriend's apartment with armfuls of "all the love you ever gave me," and angrily dumps them on the floor.
