Small, Sweet Romances. Population: 4

​There’s a beautifully wistful poetry in the way that scenic designer Lisa Schlenker’s set frames the show. A few poetic lines form stylish suggestions of a rural American forest. The set stands-in for a very small, unincorporated town in Next Act Theatre’s Almost, Maine. Directed by Karen Estrada, the show is a series of poetic amplifications rendering the deeply emotional nature of true romantic love. Playwright John Cariani’s script is touchingly whimsical in its exploration of human connection amidst the powerful human emptiness of open nature. Estrada engages a cast of four in a series of narratives that explore the most intimate details of emotional life.


Rachael Zientek is a treasure onstage. There’s a beautiful earnestness about her that serves half the population of the town quite well. She’s a bartender at The Moose Patty. She’s a woman from out of town looking to see her husband off on a big journey. She’s someone who has been away for years who is only now returning. Zientek has such an open embrace of emotion that lends the stage such endearing warmth without compromising the intricacy and nuance needed for an in-depth exploration of something as totally overwhelming as romantic love. It’s always nice to see Zientek onstage again. It’s particularly satisfying seeing her play half the women in a small town in rural Maine.


Rudy Galvan wields a steady emotional gravity onstage that gives firm foundation to some of the more erratic energies brought by other characters. Even when he’s being wildly romantic, there’s a steadiness to it that feels remarkably reassuring. He’s offering aid to a woman who has taken-up residence on his property. And he loves her even though he’s never met her before. Elsewhere he’s a guy who finds himself overwhelmed by the amount of love that he’d given a woman as she returns it to him. It’s a profoundly tense moment, but he holds steady through it all without feeling at all emotionally distant. That’s one hell of a dichotomy to manage.


Bree Beelow is given the challenge of working with some of the more complicated drama in the show. It’s not easy for anyone to manage the intricacies of romance without being able to tap-into the comedy. ZIentek plays a lot of quirky characters that allow her to gracefully play with whimsy in her performances. Below has to remain pretty solidly ensconced in the dramatic end of things for much of the show. She does a remarkably good job of playing a variety of people who are all fractured in different ways, but it’s really nice to see her move into physical comedy near the end of the show in the role of a woman with ridicuolusly intense personal boundaries that finally falter after another trip around the wilderness on a snowmobile.


Jake Horstmeier rounds out the cast in a few roles that require him to really embrace the essence of vulnerability. He’s a broken man at a bar with a strange tattoo and he’s someone who is in a marriage that may be falling apart and he’s flawed in many ways...but there ARE other moments for Horstmeier. He’s answering the door for someone who has become a stranger and he carries himself with a serene sense of emotional connection...even in silence. Perhaps one of the more challenging scenes in the whole play involves Horstmeier and Galvan playing a couple of guys who fall into absurdist physical comedy. Two guys fall for each other...it’s deeply symbolic, but it would be hell for any pair of actors to carry across onstage without compromising the serious nature of human emotion that’s at the center of it all. Horstmeier and Galvan do an exceptional job of keeping it all quite deflty-rendred.


Next Act’s production of Almost, Maine runs through Dec. 15 at Next Act’s space on 255 S. Water Street. For ticket reservations and more, visit Next Act Online.