The last show of the summer season, “Almost Maine,” opened at the Hackmatack Playhouse in Berwick on the Aug. 17. The romantic comedy written by John Cariani is set in a small town in northern Maine that doesn’t exist. However, the events could just as easily have occurred in rural Vermont or New Hampshire, or for that matter in any rural, sparsely populated area in the country.

It is not so much a show as it is a series of vignettes that describe relationships that could take place between folks anywhere but seem to mirror behaviors that fit the rural mindset, or what even folks from “away” believe to be the mindset of rural Maine.

The show includes five relatively short scenes that collectively give the audience the slow-moving pace of rural life. The action takes place on a cold, clear moonless, slightly surreal Friday night in the middle of a northern Maine winter.

The first scene takes place as a couple sit on a bench with the young lady sitting next to her bashful boyfriend. The next describes a woman who wants to view the northern lights and who we learn wants to see her dead husband’s soul ascend to heaven. She meets a handyman who he is attracted to her and soon it is mutual.

The comedy in the show does not come from guffaws or hilarity; rather, it comes from clever lines of dialogue, which often result in knowing chuckles in the audience.

Perhaps the most effective scene occurs in the encounter at a restaurant where another bashful boy meets a former sweetheart and he wants to get things going again between them.

Eventually, she tells him that she is engaged and that she is there with other gals at a party. She notices that he has the name “villian” tattooed on his arm, and he explains that it should have been “villain” but was misspelled. Why villain? Because he felt that he was a villain in not pursuing her. A waitress notices the tattoo, and she seems to take an interest in the man. It is then that we learn that her name is Villian.

The rest of the scenes take place after intermission. Perhaps the most touching is the one where we see a woman carrying a suitcase approaching a house. It is the middle of the night, and the woman tells the man at the house that she took a cab from Bangor and traveled for hours to get to the town. It seems that a man proposed to her, and she was supposed to respond to him before sunrise. She never did.

She does not recognize the man from the house as the one who proposed. She says that she wants to accept the proposal. The man says that it is well before sunrise and removes his glasses so she can see that he was the man who made the proposal of marriage many years ago. However, there is no happy ending, as we hear a female voice from the house and learn that the lady with the suitcase is simply too late.

One other scene describes events when couples fail to communicate effectively. A lady can’t find her shoe after skating, and then the shoe incredibly falls from the sky. The show ends with a couple sitting on the same bench the show opened with, watching the snow fall with the moon and the northern lights highlighted

There are but four actors in the show: Monique Foote, Josh Gluck, Jennifer Henry and Adam LaFramboise. They know their lines and interact with each other effectively. They each have expressive and dramatic moments and are effective in their roles.

Genevive Aichele directed the play, and given the fact that the thrust of the action is the result of the dialogue, she has to take credit for the movement and interplay of the characters. The set by Jerard-James Craven gives the impression of space with the moon on the set, a perfect ending to the last scene before intermission.

The lighting by Michael Turner complements the action, and adds to the effectiveness of the various scenes. The show continues Wednesday to Saturdays at 8 p.m., with matinees on Aug. 25 and Sept. 1.

Good script, good acting, good theater, but probably not for very young children.

— Morton Gold is a composer/ conductor, retired educator and an arts reviewer for the Journal Tribune.