Almost, Maine
Almost, Maine is a play by John Cariani, comprising nine short plays that explore love and loss in a remote, mythical almost-town called Almost, Maine. It premiered at the Portland Stage Company in Portland, Maine in 2001 where it broke box office records and garnered critical acclaim. Cariani later adapted the play into a book of the same name. Scenes. There are eleven short scenes: Ginette hopes to get emotionally closer to Pete, but Pete ruins the moment by proposing a new theory of closeness in which Ginette is as far away from him as she can  possibly be. Glory finds herself in East’s yard as she waits for the Northern Lights. She carries with her a paper bag, claiming it contains her heart, which is broken and made of slate. East tries to take her heart multiple times. Glory explains that her heart broke when her husband, Wes, went away with someone else. She had to go to the hospital and get an artificial heart. When Wes returned, saying he wanted her back, Glory said that her new heart didn't want him back. Wes was run over by an ambulance shortly thereafter. Glory allows  East to try to fix the heart in her bag. Sandrine enters an awkward situation after running into Jimmy, an ex. Jimmy tries to flirt with Sandrine before realizing that Sandrine is about to marry someone else. Sandrine notices Jimmy's tattoo, which says 'Villian', a misspelling of 'Villain'. After Sandrine leaves, Jimmy learns that the waitress is called Villian. Steve is incapable of feeling pain and explains to Marvalyn that his brother had to teach him what hurts and what to be afraid of. Marvalyn, who is going through a rough time with her boyfriend, kisses Steve, and accidentally  hits him with an ironing board. Steve is hurt this time and exclaims "Ow", and the scene is left on a cliffhanger. Gayle and Lendall are breaking up. Gayle returns to Lendall the love he gave her, represented by large red bags. Gayle wants Lendall to return the love she gave him. Lendall does so, giving Gayle a very small red box. Gayle is disappointed to find that she seemingly gave Lendall much less love than he gave her. However, Lendall reveals that the box contains a ring and proposes to her. Gayle and Lendall get back together again. Pete  considers the consequences of his theory on closeness. Randy and Chad compare their previous dates, which both went very badly. Chad suddenly tells Randy that he loves him. Unable to reach each other emotionally, Randy and Chad repeatedly fall down when they look at each other. A married couple gets into an argument concurrently with Marci losing her shoe. As they break up, her shoe drops from the sky. Hope goes to a house looking for a man named Daniel. A man answers. Hope explains that Daniel asked her if she would marry him, and she promised to give a  response before sunrise, but never gave a response at all. Hope learns that the man is Daniel, but that he had lost hope and married someone else. Dave gives Rhonda a pointillism painting he made. After he helps her see that it is of a heart, they are implied to have sex. Ginette returns to Pete, apparently having walked around the entire world over the course of the play. Aside from a few references in dialogue to characters in other scenes, the stories are standalone and do not intertwine. Apart from the prologue/interlogue/epilogue section, the scenes can hypothetically  be presented in any order but are written in the order above. Reviews and awards. "Almost, Maine" opened Off-Broadway at the Daryl Roth Theatre on 12 January 2006 and closed on 12 February 2006. Directed by Gabriel Barre, the cast included Todd Cerveris, Justin Hagan, Miriam Shor, and Finnerty Steeves. Though its Off Broadway run was brief, the play is featured in Smith and Kraus' "New Playwrights: Best Plays of 2006" and has proved popular in professional and nonprofessional theatre companies worldwide. In 2017-2018, it was the most produced play in North American high schools, supplanting Shakespeare's  A Midsummer Night's Dream. "The New York Times" review of the play in 2006 was mixed: “A comedy comprising almost a dozen two-character vignettes exploring the sudden thunderclap of love and the scorched earth that sometimes follows, John Cariani’s play will evoke either "awww"-s or "ick"-s, depending on your affection for its whimsical approach to the joys and perils of romance.” "The New York Times" review of another production at TheatreWorks in Hartford in 2013 was positive: “John Cariani’s "Almost, Maine" is a series of nine amiably absurdist vignettes about love, with a touch of good -natured magic realism ... This is a beautifully structured play, with nifty surprise endings (most but not all of them happy) and passing references to characters from other vignettes, which slyly tell us more about them. Mr. Cariani describes the play’s subject as ‘falling in and out of love’. It is just as much about pain.” Controversy. In October 2014, Maiden High School in North Carolina canceled a production of "Almost, Maine" after "some parents and area churches complained about the play’s inclusion of a same-sex couple" according to students. Principal Rob Bliss released a statement describing the  play as having "sexually-explicit overtones and multiple sexual innuendos that are not aligned with our mission and educational objectives." John Cariani contacted a local news outlet about the controversy and was quoted as saying "I believe the play is about love, not sexual love. The scene with the two young men has no reference to sex at all." Cariani, who is gay, added: "I just think there is a solution other than canceling the production. I’ve reached out to the teacher who applied for rights to the play, but I haven’t heard back. I don’t think  the students should have to suffer. They had already purchased the play and started rehearsing for it." With the involvement of a local teacher, Carmen Eckard, the group performed the play off-campus in mid January, after raising over $6,000 on Kickstarter. The play was directed by local actor and attorney William Morgan.