American Blues Theater’s “The Last Wide Open,” with Dara Cameron and Michael Mahler/Photo: Jenn Udoni
“Some people like to fill the world with silly love songs,” sings Paul McCartney. “And what’s wrong with that? I’d like to know.”
Nothing’s wrong with that. A silly love song can be charming and tuneful. It’s OK, but if we’re craving something deeper, we may want to listen to something else.
“The Last Wide Open,” a three-person musical now playing at American Blues Theater, calls itself a “love song in three movements.” And it reminded me of McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs.” It’s likable and well-performed, but can be corny and generic, despite its very specific location. The dialogue by Audrey Cefaly does not always feel like real people talking. Her lyrics, set to music by Matthew M. Nielson, are witty but have an improvised quality, as if they were made up on the spot in the hope of improving them later. They also don’t feel long enough, considering the talent of the performers.
Directed by Gwendolyn Whiteside, “The Last Wide Open” is set in a Polish restaurant and involves a will-they-or-won’t-they romance between a waitress, Lina (Dara Cameron), and a dishwasher, an immigrant named Mikolaj (Michael Mahler). It imagines three different scenarios or “movements”—one in which Mikolaj has been in the country two years, one in which he’s been here two days, and a third fifteen years after his arrival. The play is in English, but with Polish words and phrases sprinkled in for flavor.
The play was originally set in an Italian restaurant when it premiered in Cincinnati, using Italian words and phrases. This is its premiere in a Polish setting, adapted by Katarzyna Müller with dialect coaching by her sister Matilda Szydagis. The set by Grant Sabin and Marcus Klein magnificently depicts a Chicago Polish restaurant—like the recently closed “Podhalanka” on Division. There are images of Pope John Paul II and the Black Madonna of Czestochowa on the wall, along with a bouquet of homemade paper flowers, crosses, carved wooden plates, and bottles of vodka on a shelf. The audience sits at little cloth-covered tables in the Davee Studio Theater space, as if we were customers.
American Blues Theater’s “The Last Wide Open,” with Dara Cameron and Michael Mahler/Photo: Jenn Udoni
The play opens beautifully with Mahler playing the piano, moving from pop pieces like George Harrison’s “Something” to Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat Major. Then the audience is introduced to the conceit—that we will see three variations of the story, all after-hours on May 5, with a thunderstorm outside.
In each version, Lina and Mikolaj talk about life and love—though in the second movement, Mikolaj is so new to English that they must use a cell-phone translation app. Mixed into the action are little love songs—a “confession” song when all the feelings pour out, a “long-ago song” about a past affair, a “just as well” song about accepting a relationship that isn’t right. Mahler plays guitar, sometimes with Cameron or “Stagehand” J.G. Smith on the ukelele. (Smith also gives us silent, comical reactions to the story.) Lina is nervous and skeptical about love, longing for what she doesn’t have, while Mikolaj is willing to believe in new chances, despite disappointments in his past.
A married couple in real life, Cameron and Mahler have terrific chemistry and convince us of the characters’ feelings, despite the banality of some of the dialogue. One of the best scenes is when Lina tries to get Mikolaj to help her choose a veil for her upcoming marriage to another man. Since Mikolaj is a new immigrant, the scene is performed in pantomime and just a few words of Polish and English. But we can see the longing in Mikolaj’s eyes as he watches her try on veils, and Lina becoming more flustered as she feels it, too.
The play is at its most interesting when a decision is made to go backward, to give the pair another chance. The characters even get the audience involved on the question of whether true love exists.
Overall, this production has many appealing qualities—the performers are gifted and the emotions universal. But the play doesn’t quite satisfy. It needs more—more music, more convincing dialogue. I wanted the full pierogi plate, but left feeling a little hungry.
“The Last Wide Open” runs through October 26 at American Blues Theater, 5627 North Lincoln. Showtimes: Wednesdays at 2pm (October 16 and 23); Thursdays at 2pm (October 24) and 7:30pm (October 17); Fridays at 7:30pm; Saturdays at 4:30pm (October 26) and 7:30pm (October 19); Sundays at 2:30pm. Tickets are $30-$45, available at americanbluestheater.com.
