About the Play:

Love/Sick is a full-length romantic comedy by John Cariani. Sometimes love is messy in this romantic comedy where a unique cast of characters battle for love with heart-warming optimism. Love/Sick tells the stories of nine different couples, who are all experiencing love and heartbreak. Each couple’s story is told in a single scene, and the final scene of the show ties all nine couples together.

Love/Sick is a collection of nine slightly twisted and completely hilarious short plays about love and loss. A darker cousin to to the author's Almost, Maine, set on a Friday night in an alternative suburban reality, this 80-minute romp explores the pain and the joy that comes with being in love. Each play has its own arc and tells the story of a couple at a crossroads in their relationship: from a couple that's obsessively impulsive, to a bride with literally cold feet, to a man who had a very… exciting lunch, to the couple who forgot to have a baby... the individual plays work together to create a satisfying whole. Full of imperfect lovers and dreamers, Love/Sick is an unromantic comedy for the romantic in everyone.

Love/Sick premiered in 2013 at Portland Stage Company in Portland, Maine. Since then the play debuted Off-Broadway 2015 at the Royal Family Performing Arts Space in Midtown Manhattan and has become popular with high school, college, and community theatre groups looking for something amusing and "different" because, like Almost, Maine, it can accommodate a large cast, but doesn't require that cast to all appear onstage together at any point. This allows for maximum participation while making rehearsals significantly less taxing than your average show.

Cast: a minimum of 2 female and 2 male (doubling) portray 18 roles, but you can cast as many as 9 female and 9 male

What people say:

"Sometimes playwright John Cariani looks at the world – actually the worlds – of love and relationships through rose-colored glasses. Just as often he views those worlds through lenses tinted a middling-to-dark-gray or maybe a jaundiced yellow… While poking fun at the happily-ever-after notion by means of a strong dose of happily-never-after, Cariani shoots his cockeyed valentines with a quiver full of funny lines. He knows how to keep audiences laughing while passing along disappointing news." — The Huffington Post

"...Whimsical romantic comedy. In the nine vignettes that make up [the] play, couples meet [or] break apart or learn to love each other more...the jokes here are easygoing and snark-free." — The New York Times

"[Love/Sick brings] to light the complexity of communication and what it means to not only love someone else, but yourself as well…Truly beautiful." — TheSource.com

"A dark, amusing look at romance…strikes just the right balance between wisdom and whimsy…light, bright, anti-romantic, and engaging." — The Hartford Courant

"Entertaining and fun. A satisfyingly dark look at this thing we call love." — BroadwayWorld.com

About the Paywright:

John Cariani is an award-winning American actor and an accomplished playwright. As an actor, he has appeared on and off Broadway, and in several films and television shows. He is best known to television viewers as the unwavering forensic expert Julian Beck in Law & Order. On stage, he earned a Tony Award nomination for his role as Motel the Tailor in the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof. As a playwright, he is best known for his first play, Almost, Maine, which has become one of the most frequently produced plays in the United States and Canada.