The truth behind modern day romances are not usually highlighted in Hollywood films because most people do not live “happily ever after.” The fall play, however, refused to follow Hollywood’s portrayal of love, instead, bringing the audience in on realistic relationships.

Lovesick is a play compiled of nine scenes involving different couples in difficult stages within a relationship, starting with a couple that falls in love at first sight to an interesting encounter with an ex-husband. This play is the opposite of a romantic film because it almost only showcases the rough times in relationships, which helps students open their eyes and take a step back from unrealistic portrayals of relationships.  

“I think the relationships were very representative of the current situations that different people have,” Griffin Brown, sophomore who plays Man, said. “Romantic movies only show fairy tale relationships where everything goes right and everything’s happy. This play shows the darker side of relationships: the troubles people face in relationships and how they do overcome those issues or don’t and how they move on from those issues.”

Each chapter in the show, except for the first and last scene, took place in a house or neighbourhood. In order to tie all of them together, the technological crew for the show created a giant, well-crafted blueprint of two houses. They also cleverly placed three real doors in place of where the doors were in the blueprint. The blueprint prop adjusted to each scene very well and and kept everyone’s interest on the scene without having to use a lot of distracting backdrops switching from scene to scene.

“I feel like [this play] appealed to the audience because it was humorous and it captured everyone’s interest,” Lexi Halinski, junior audience member, said. “Everyone can somewhat relate to the relationships in the play. They’re more realistic than movie romances so there’s a better chance the audience can connect on a personal level with the situations.”

Halinski believed the play went smoothly but behind the scenes, there were definitely small mistakes made.

“There was a little malfunction [on opening night]. One of the walls basically fell down, but one thing in theatre is that you have to keep going no matter what happens,” Brown said. “You have to keep going with the show. Obviously with theatre there’s gonna be bumps every night, but we kept going.”

Even with the small mistakes made behind the scenes, the performance showed itself to be flawless. The actors had obviously studied their roles beyond just reading words on a page. Watching this performance felt more like seeing real couples experiencing problems in their relationships than actors repeating memorized lines. This performance was definitely high quality and it was enjoyable to see this play unfold into a masterpiece.

“The play was very enjoyable and I would definitely recommend this for other people to see,” Halinski said. “I wouldn’t suggest anyone to choose seeing this for a first date, but it’s definitely funny and well worth the money and time spent.”