THEATRE: Poly Theatre performed their play Love Sick from Thursday, March 21 through Saturday, March 24.
By Esther Whang, Staff Writer
Poly Theatre’s Love Sick stands out from other plays due to its mature themes. It consists of a series of nine short skits, each telling a love story fraught with strife or comedic happenstance. For example, one of the skits, Destiny, tells of a husband and wife who happen to meet coincidentally at a supermarket. Another skit, Uh Oh, describes a wife who attempts to save her marriage. What?! is a skit about a man who has a stress disorder that endangers his love life.
The cast and crew put a lot of time and effort into the production. A couple of skits were directed by the students themselves. The tech crew worked hard for a week to make the beautiful set, while the cast rehearsed for about a month, striving to perfect each detail. The puzzle pieces that can be seen on the set were painted by an advanced art class at Poly.
Similar to Almost Maine, another play Poly theatre performed a couple years back, Love Sick is a play written by John Cariani. It is considered to be a different take, or even a sequel, to Almost Maine, a play also written by Cariani. Similar to Love Sick, Almost Maine consists of nine parts, each telling of a love story that contains hilarious dialogue and serious themes, sometimes both at once. Love Sick differs from Almost Maine as it seems to contain darker themes. “While ‘Love/Sick’ is billed as a ‘darker cousin’ to ‘Almost, Maine,’ they share some of the same strained features— forced quirkiness, unrealistic kisses, abrupt plot swings,” The New York Times writer Ken Jaworowski wrote in his article “Review: John Cariani’s ‘Love/Sick’ at Royal Family.”
Audiences enjoyed the humor and the fun aspects that were incorporated into the play, which combined mature themes with flamboyant acting. The level of maturity is what made Love Sick a highlight from other Poly Theatre plays.