Live and in person at the Stratford Perth Museum, Stratford, Ont. Produced by Here for Now Theatre, playing until Sept. 7, 2024.
Written by Julia Lederer
Directed by Marie Farsi
Set and costumes by Patricia Reilly
Sound by Dhanish Qumar Chinniah
Cast: Kate Lynch
Nicholas Santillo
Loretta Yu
With Love and a Major Organ by Julia Lederer is a quirky, whimsical comedy about love, loneliness, wanting to connect to another person, and searching for the perfect partner.
From the program note: “During her morning commute, a young woman falls in love with a total stranger she meets on the subway. After giving the man her actual beating heart, he disappears—leading this unlikely heroine on a quest to retrieve her heart, accidentally cracking open those of others she meets along the way.”
I first saw a version of the play at the Next Wave Festival in Toronto in 2013. The play has been revised but is still wonderfully quirky, eccentric and captures our sense of whimsy.
George is the young man on the subway. When he was a baby his mother Mona wanted to protect him from heartache so she gave him a heart made of paper, so as to save him from having his heart broken. Now this young woman, named Anabel, comes along and falls in love with him on the subway, and gives him her actual beating heart. It takes him some time to process this gift.
In the meantime, Mona is trying to make her own connection with another person when she goes on line and gets involved with speed-dating and seeks help with ‘an on-line shrink.’ You have to be charmed by playwright Julia Lederer’s sense of ‘the odd-ball.’ Lederer’s dialogue is also deliciously whimsical.
That idea of a chance meeting on the subway—we all know about—but having Anabel give her actual heart away to George because she is smitten and then searching for him to get it back, is sweet and quirky in equal measure. Julia Lederer’s facility with language is terrific. She has a line that goes like this: “hours pass as slowly as kidney stones.” Brilliant. Her characters have a disarming sense of humour that is charming in its way.
Marie Farsi has envisioned and created a fine, efficient, smart production. Blood-purple is the major colour, as in a deep blood colour. Patricia Reilly has created an intriguing set of blood-purple cords hanging down from the flies; with three blood-purple coloured chairs for the three characters that are moved around for different locations. Some of Anabel’s clothes and bag are that same purple. Various letters are delivered by a pully system that has a letter attached with a clothes hook and then slid along a wire until it’s delivered to the correct person. Efficient and hilarious.
Both Kate Lynch as Mona and Nicholas Santillo as George, her son, play their comedy very straight, which makes it funnier. They both seem to float in a world where they are not quite at home, which has its own charm. As Anabel, Loretta Yu is lively, at times hyper-active, and that has its own humour as well.
With Love and a Major Organ is a gentle and sweet play about love when one least expects it, that cracks a heart open and makes one go and find the person who caused the feeling in the first place. Lovely.
Here for Now Theatre presents:
Plays until Sept. 7, 2024
Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes (no intermission)