American Blues Theater presents "The Last Wide Open"
CHICAGO (CBS) — "The Last Wide Open" is a love story made for Chicago, a rom-com intersecting with a musical that's a little meta, and it's now on stage at the American Blues Theater.
Audiences meet a weary waitress and an immigrant dishwasher working in a Polish restaurant. Here's the meta part, with shades of "Groundhog Day"—we get to see how their love story might develop in parallel timelines.
Real-life spouses Michael Mahler and Dara Cameron play the leads, and every lonely heart knows this story.
As originally written, our star-crossed lovers met in an Italian restaurant. This production has been adapted for Chicago by placing the pair in a Polish spot, and the Italian dishwasher is now a Polish immigrant.
Executive Artistic Director Wendy Whiteside explained the intricacies of the plot.
"It is about two people who meet at a restaurant in Chicago. One is a dishwasher, and one is a waitress. They have a connection and they try to figure out what that connection is. They go through this three different times until they find out what it is that they are. We, in rehearsal, kept calling it the 'multiverse,'" Whiteside said.
The script was tweaked a bit to give it more of a Chicago feel.
"So when we first read it, we loved it. It's by Audrey Cefaly, and the play was set in a town in America, in an Italian restaurant. We asked Audrey if she would allow us to adapt it for Chicago, setting it here and then to set it in a Polish restaurant. She wrote something in our play that was so generous to theaters. She said that the character of the dishwasher could be portrayed by any country of origin that fit the actor," Whiteside said.
How does a real-life married couple playing the leads impact the creative process?
"They have a shorthand. And I think that that plays out and you see it on stage. To watch them fall in love night after night with such intensity. It really is moving," Whiteside said.
The set in this production is based on a real-life Polish restaurant in Wicker Park. American Blues Theater is presenting "The Last Wide Open" through August 18, but it's been so popular that it's coming back in October for a three-week run.
