‘Maine’ surprisingly charming

John Cariani's 2006 "Almost, Maine," at the Las Vegas Academy of International Studies, Performing and Visual Arts, is about a series of encounters designed -- over designed -- to touch your heart.

You expect the worst when you read in the program a note by director John Morris telling us how much he loves his wife and how that love relates to the script. (Just once I'd like to read a note from a director that admits, "My wife and I don't get along.")

The surprise is that Morris has turned this sometimes mawkish bit of whimsy into a charming, genuinely romantic evening.

The 19-member cast performs a series of vignettes about couples falling in and out of love. Each of the short takes has at least one moment in which the natural action is interrupted by a supernatural element -- a shoe falls from the sky, a girl walks around the world, two men who have fallen in love literally fall down every time they try to approach one another.

We're at the most northern place in the continental United States, in a freezing, isolated (and mythical) town. The night stars here seem to have real power. They're like Greek gods wreaking havoc and beauty on the mortals below.

I hesitate to say much about the tales, because their attraction is in the unexpected plots. Maybe the tone is best described by a piece called "Her Heart" in which an out-of-towner (Paige Billiot) camps in front of the home of a man she does not know (Cody Canyon) so that she can see the northern lights. She's been carrying her broken heart in a bag. It turns out the couple has more in common than they realize.

Morris' set and Karl Kissmann's lights create an irresistible physical environment of falling snow, picket fences, stars, porches and swings. This seems the sort of place where magic would occur.

The actors go beneath the lines by communicating a yearning their characters don't fully understand. Among the noteworthy: Callie Williams as an independent, hearty and sexually frightened woman who meets her match. Williams demonstrates exquisite comic timing, but never at the expense of dramatic reality.

And Drew Lynch, as a love-struck teenager who doesn't know how to say the right words to win over the love of his life, projects a sincere innocence and exuberance. He's likely to remind even the most bitter among us of the poetry in our first crush.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.