'The Last Wide Open' review: Play weaves beautiful music into love scenes from a Polish restaurant

“The Last Wide Open” is billed as a “love song in three movements.” The movements (or acts) are punctuated by acoustic music, but unlike a traditional musical, there’s no splashy choreography — or even a chorus — in the three-person, 80-minute production running through Aug. 18 at American Blues Theater. In the immersive set meticulously modeled after Polish restaurants in Wicker Park and Jefferson Park, the trio that comprises the cast in this music-punctuated romance delivers the kind of emotional punch that pierces the heart.

Directed by Gwendolyn Whiteside, “The Last Wide Open” is a poignant look at an unconventional, not-quite-happily-ever-after love story as well as a fulsome dive into the many ways love can devastate as well as uplift.

With book and lyrics by Audrey Cefaly and a score by Matthew M. Nielson, "The Last Wide Open" follows the relationship between waitress Lina (Dara Cameron), a lifelong Chicagoan, and Mikolaj (Michael Maher), a Polish immigrant who begins his life in the U.S. as a dishwasher.

The production is steeped in Polish culture and peppered with Polish phrases — which you’ll have absolutely no trouble understanding because the cast is just that good. (In the script’s original version, the character of Mikola was an Italian immigrant. This is the world premiere of the production that makes him Polish.)

For the inaugural production in American Blues’ intimate Davee Studio theater, set designer Grant Sabin has created a restaurant, the audience seated at tables surrounding the stage. Set dresser Elyse Dolan has turned it into a micro-museum of Polish culture: A bouquet of paper flowers handmade in Poland adorns a wall filled with old family photos from Poland-born Katarzyna Muller (who did the Polish adaptation and consulted Polish language and culture) and her sister Matilda Szydagis (the show’s dialect coach). A scroll near the entrance contains stanzas from the Polish national anthem. A Polish ciupaga (a combination walking stick/axe) hangs above the door. The audience sits at tables decked out with candles and tablecloths.

The romance embedded in the story seems unlikely at first. For Lina, being engaged and married means settling. Asked if she loves her (never seen) fiancé, the best Lina can come up with is, “He’s a very good man.”

For Mikolaj, falling in love yielded not a happy ending but grief. Their world views couldn’t be more different. Lina believes love is no more real than a fairy tale. Even broken-hearted, Mikolaj stalwartly believes love is what defines humanity, a crucial font of hope and joy. A "stagehand" (J.G. Smith) hustles silently between them, cleaning off tables and occasionally playing the ukulele.

In the first act — or “movement” in the play’s musical parlance — Mikolaj has been in the U.S. for two years. In the second, the script flashes back to 48 hours after his arrival. And in the third, he’s been in Chicago for 15 years.

The non-linear structure provides the audience with a bittersweet sense of retrospect. When Mikolaj and Lina discuss their dreams on his second day in America, we already know — or suspect we know — how those dreams are going to play out since the opening scene has showed us where two are two years later.

Mahler does double duty as the show’s music director and provides most of the musical accompaniment on guitar or ukulele or piano. Cameron’s silvery soprano and Mahler’s understated but hugely powerful agility on vocals and instruments weave the songs seamlessly into the story. The music — primarily acoustic folk ballads with a brief, hilarious Bon Jovi interlude — deepen the plot and feel as natural as speaking.

There’s a bit of a multi-verse built into the story: In each movement, Lina recounts the story of a man who just died alone in her apartment building, always as if it just happened. Another tale — about a restaurant customer who flings pierogies at the ceiling after her husband announces he wants a divorce — also is relayed as a recent event in every movement. And the first movement gets a replay in the final moments that puts a new, beautiful twist on the narrative.

There’s also a prelude, with Mahler giving a mini-concert on the restaurant’s battered piano, culminating in a rendition of Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat Minor that will take your breath away.

At its core, “The Last Wide Open” is a depiction of love as devastation, and love as essential for survival.

It’s beautifully told here. In the end, the audience is left to interpret whether Mikolaj and Lina have a story that ends with happily-ever-after or — far more likely — something far more ambiguous, rather like life itself.