Maple and Vine

What does it mean to live a truly authentic life? How far would you be willing to go to escape the distractions of the 21st Century? What are you willing to sacrifice to connect with your friends and family on a more personal level away from the convenience of social media?

Katha and Ryu suddenly find themselves pondering these very questions as they eschew modern living for the simpler times of 1955 in Jordan Harrison's Off-Broadway hit "Maple and Vine" playing through February 16 at Cygnet Theatre in Old Town.

Ryu (Greg Watanabe) is a successful plastic surgeon who is reluctant to give up his career after his wife Katha (Jo Anne Glover) is convinced to join the Society of Dynamic Obsolescence (SDO), a "cult" that has chosen to give-up the new millennium and its conveniences and instead live frozen in time in 1955.

Longing for something different as she copes with the loss of her child at birth, Katha is convinced by a smooth-talking man named Dean (Jordan Miller) to join the commune and work towards living as authentically mid-Century as possible. They soon find out that fewer distractions and simpler times come with a price and Katha and Ryu are faced with a dilemma: continue to live authentically in a false world or fake it in the real one?

"Maple and Vine" is an interesting concept with a smart script and anchored by performances from Miller and his on-stage spouse Ellen (Amanda Sitton), though it feels much like a jumbo-jet lumbering down a long runway -- once it gets enough speed it takes off, but until then the audience is left looking out the window wondering if there is indeed enough runway to get this behemoth off the ground.

Director Igor Goldin made a bold choice in calling for some over-the-top and blatantly stereotypical performances from actors Glover and Mike Nardelli who doubled as Katha's co-workers as well as fellow SDO neighbors. These stereotypes, Nardelli's especially, were unbelievable and offensive but for a reason: the closer these characters got to living authentically in a contrived world, the more authentic their performance became. This is something that could be easily over-looked by the casual theater-goer, though "Maple and Vine" was not written for that audience.

Despite this, the show is still very accessible, and the second act is rampant with some steamy man-on-man action which will undoubtedly delight some of the boys in attendance. Standing solidly on its own legs, "Maple and Vine" is both deep and superficial, offers its spectators as much as they want to take away, and will undoubtedly have everyone wondering just how good the good ol' days were.