I KNOW I promised a second article on the plight of playwrights and that article will be coming pretty soon, but something more immediate has come up and I need to ask you, the Guyanese reading populace, this most important of questions: Do we ever stage romantic comedies in Guyana? I’m talking about real romantic comedies, not the flashes and spurts of romance that one finds in the slapstick plays and farces that are popular on the local stage. I’m talking about that romantic comedy that follows and yet subverts the ‘boy meets girl’ formula. I’m talking about the romantic comedy that makes you laugh in one scene and then makes you cry in another. I’m talking about the romantic comedy that feels so real that it makes your heart thud in your chest as you think of someone you use to know, from long ago. The romantic comedy that is only, entirely about love.

The romantic comedy that highlights the highs and the lows, the meet-cutes and the kissing and the falling in and out of love. The romantic comedy that gives us the crippling sadness that comes at the end of a relationship and the bright sparks of hope that come with the beginnings of another. That is the kind of romantic comedy we need in our lives, and yet, do ever have those on the local stage anymore?

The truth is that I cannot think of a single play that can be regarded as a full-fledged romantic comedy. This could be, of course, my own faulty memory failing me once more, or it could mean that there is a dearth of romantic comedies on the Guyanese stage. Whatever the case, one of the most performed plays in North American high schools, “Almost, Maine” – a romantic comedy in the truest sense of the term, will be staged at the Theatre Guild on the evening of Saturday, June 8.

John Cariani’s “Almost, Maine,” set in the fictional town of “Almost” in Maine, is an anthology play, composed of nine scenes, each one telling the story of a couple and their experiences with the sorrows and joys that come with that wild emotion we call love. The many different stories being told ensures that the audience does not get bored, by offering a plethora of dramatic events and characters to observe. There is a woman in a painful relationship who has an interesting encounter with a man who cannot feel pain. There are two friends who literally begin to fall all over the place as they fall in love with each other. There is a married couple whose relationship comes to an end when a missing shoe becomes involved. There is a girl who returns all the love (big bags of it) that she has received from her boyfriend, and there is the woman who carries the broken shards of her heart around in a paper bag. All these and more are the offerings of “Almost, Maine.”
There is a sense of the absurd and a sense of magical realism that exists only in the smallest of hints within the play. It is almost as if these two literary elements barely touch the lives of the characters in the play, so that the essence of reality – of the characters and their situations – is never lost, but amplified and becomes free and magical, as if the author wanted to allow the audience to see or experience the magical nature of love itself in a more visual/visceral form. Whatever the intention, the touch of absurdism and magical realism works and takes the play up another level, beyond the mundane sort of romantic comedies that we think of when we think of romantic comedies. Aside, from the literary aspects, the play offers realistic characters, presented in fresh ways, each of whom we end of up rooting for simply because of the uplifting nature of the text. “Almost, Maine” may be one of the happiest pieces of literature I have ever read – and I think I reacted so positively upon reading it simply because we are in a time of gloom and much darkness, where we need some kind of joy, hope and positivity in our lives, and therein lies the real appeal of “Almost, Maine.” After all, given everything that is happening in this country and beyond, isn’t going to a see a romantic comedy at the theatre the exact kind of rebellious act that one should take in the face of everything that is going on around us? I certainly believe it is.

The play is being produced by the Georgetown International Academy, the institution that staged “Beauty and the Beast Jr.” at the National Cultural Centre earlier this year. As with all of the productions held by the school, students are actively involved in the planning and execution of the performance. The entire high-school department, for example, is made up of students who are not only acting, designing, and stage managing, but are also creating promotional material and involved in building/sourcing the relevant props for the production. Some of the younger students in the school’s Performing Arts Club will be contributing with their live musical renditions. Overall, the evening of June 8 at the Theatre Guild promises a good time, with good people, a good play, and a good evening at the theatre where, finally, a romantic comedy will be on show again.