Splintered Stage Presents "Love/Sick": a must-see dark comedy
- Kate Barber
- 16 minutes ago
- 6 min read
Splintered Stage presents “Love/Sick,” a one-act dark comedy play cycle by John Cariani. Instead of one through-line narrative, the play is a collection of short plays that explore how romance can go wrong. Each short features just two characters, ranging from love at first sight to long-ago ex-lovers.
Splintered Stage is an independent theater company in Wilmington founded by scenic designer and producer Benedict R. Fancy. Their mission? “To create intimate, thought-provoking theatre that explores the complexity of the human experience—one story, one production, and one audience at a time.” Rather than juggle a traditional season, Splintered Stage focuses on one play at a time, aiming to highlight emotional truth through live storytelling.
Love/Sick was their first production, and I had the privilege of attending on opening night. The set is simple: a floor with a house blueprint, wooden beams imitating the frame of an under-construction house, and a small, narrow digital screen above.
The first short, “Obsessive Impulsive” opens on a man and a woman in a Supercenter. Upon first sight, they fall in love—lust?!—and after they recover their wits, they each begin explaining they suffer from obsessive impulsive disorder (not to be confused with obsessive compulsive disorder, they stress!). As each struggles not to confess love for (and fondle) the other, they wrestle together with their respective therapists’ warnings: they’re not to give in to love at first sight impulses. Anna and Brandon Harris (husband in wife in real life!) delivered these performances flawlessly and had the entire audience howling as they struggled to keep their hands to themselves. Their lines were perfectly in sync, their chemistry and comedy off the charts, and their superstore connection so adorable that the audience was absolutely rooting for them to give in to their obsessive impulses!
In “Singing Telegram,” Louise Overbee, played by Sierra Fiskin, anxiously awaits the arrival of her boyfriend, Gary, to show up for their dancing date. When her doorbell rings, though, it isn’t Gary waiting for her: it’s a singing telegram. Emily Graham, hilariously dressed in a cardboard heart suit with glittered tinsel and a bobbing headband that waves every time she shakes her head, informs Mrs. Overbee Gary’s sent her an important message through a singing telegram, which he ordered from the kiosk at the Supercenter. Louise jumps to the best of conclusions (a proposal through a singing telegram!), but as the Telegram begins to hesitate to deliver her song, we start to sense maybe it isn’t marriage Gary is proposing. This duo had me howling; Fiskin’s excitement paired with Graham’s awkward hesitations and reticence (to the point of claiming she actually cannot sing) was hysterical!
“What?!?” features Ben Flom and Brett J. Young as nervous, new lovers about to leave for a date. After just a month together, Ben and Andy haven’t so much as held hands, and Ben’s getting anxious. When Ben confesses his true feelings to Andy, he learns Andy has a condition that, uh, alters his senses when he’s under extreme pressure or when he’s “dazzled.” The punchy dialogue exchange here was fantastic: Flom’s exasperated reactions and Young’s hilarious “sensory altercation” deliveries created a perfect dynamic that highlighted what happens when two people are nervously, newly in love.
A bride and groom struggle to make it down the aisle in “The Answer.” When the groom flees the ceremony and holes up in the bathroom, his bride comes to find out what’s going on. While Celia insists they have a conversation on the same side of the bathroom door, Keith insists they can’t see each other on their wedding day, the result is a conversation in black tie and blindfolds. With toilet paper and ties wrapped around their heads, Sierra Fiskin and Brandon Harris have to sort out whether to try again or call it quits. Fiskin and Harris slayed again in these roles, capturing the anxiety of what happens when you love someone but aren’t sure if it’s the right thing. Comedy and heartbreak dueled hard in this one, with Fiskin and Harris leaving hearts aching for Celia and Keith.
In “Uh-Oh,” a wife huff and puffs as her husband watches television, complaining she’s bored. They never do anything anymore, and doesn’t she deserve a little fun? Jennifer Avery stars as Sarah opposite Caylan J. McKay’s Bill, delivering an amazing representation of what happens after the “honeymoon phase” of marriage. But Sarah’s idea of “spicing things up” is a little wild, and when she decides to help them “find the fun” again, Bill gets a little more excitement than he bargained for. Sarah’s read a lot of articles in a lot of journals written by experts, so she knows when people get bored, they tend to want to kill the people they love most! McKay’s horror and Avery’s crazy are a perfect pair—it felt just like peering in on your crazy neighbors and getting more than you bargained for!
Anna Harris and Ben Flom air out grievances and affairs in “Lunch and Dinner” when Kelly accidentally admits to her husband, Mark she had sex for lunch. What she doesn’t expect is that Mark had sex for lunch recently too, and what they can’t seem to agree on is what to have for dinner. Though the comedy remained in this one, a stronger air of sadness took over, too, as Harris and Flom expertly represented what it looks and feels like when you’re “really hungry” but you don’t seem to want to eat at home anymore. The punchy dialogue here, filled with puns and innuendos, added the needed comic relief, and Harris and Flom navigated both the laughs and sighs with ease.
Jill and Kevin “Forgot” to have a baby—a revelation that comes on Jill’s birthday, and a reminder staring at her in the form of way too many candles on a very small Supercenter cake. Blake Carter perfectly plays the everyday yearning for a baby woman, while Brett J. Young is confused and content with their lives. Again, this exchange was delivered so perfectly that it felt like spying on neighbors, overhearing an intense emotional conversation that wasn’t meant for you that you can’t look away from, with both Carter and Young bringing exceptional performances.
In “Sick of This,” a stay-at-home mom considers leaving, overwhelmed by childrearing while her wife is on yet another call. Somehow, even through the frosted, frustrated argument exchange between Jennifer Avery and Emily Graham, they managed to convince you they’re still in love, too. As stay-at-home mom Abbie lashes out at working mom Liz for having even the alone time in the car on the way to work, Liz airs rage about being the only one supporting the family. Avery’s desperation felt so genuine I wanted to walk out and hug her, while Graham’s quips and frustrated retorts were so pointed, I kind of wanted to high five her, too. The two women’s performances perfectly highlighted the frustrations of family roles, parenting, and burnout.
We’re back at the Supercenter in “Destiny,” where another man and woman run into each other. This time, instead of love at first sight, we get a pair of ex-lovers who are newly single: one recently divorced, and the other intending to be divorced before her husband died, conveniently negating the need for a divorce. Caylan J. McKay and Blake Carter, as Jake and Emily respectively, briefly consider a night of renewed romance, they quickly remember why they broke up in the first place. Shouting at each other in the Supercenter, we suddenly get an incredible exchange that ties every single one of the shorts all together in a perfect and unexpected way. Blake Carter’s character poses a great question: why don’t they call it destiny when it just doesn’t work out?
Every single cast member was a standout in this production. Every single line and performance was exceptional, and it struck me how rare it is to have a cast this strong individually and as a whole. Throughout the performance, the audience alternated between shaking with laughter and sighs of “Oh, that’s so sad.” The script brilliantly tied the encounters together not only in theme, but with the simple repeating presence of the superstore. (The woman beside me, after we saw a second make out session in the supercenter, asked “Where is this superstore??”) At the end, one couple gets a second chance for love—you'll have to catch their last performances to find out which one!
Both the cast and creative team did a brilliant job with this production. Each cast member brought each character, scenario, and exchange to life in such a way that I truly felt voyeuristic in each instance: these were real people fighting about real things, struggling to understand life and love. I could hardly believe this was opening night on a company's first production: this was true theater art at its finest.
Whatever Splintered Stage gets up to next, I’m there—and you should be too!
You can still catch Love/Sick:
August 1 at 2pm and 7:30pm August 2 at 2pm Tickets $25 Location: Cape Fear Academy, Erin E McNeil Fine Arts Center
