Playwright: Sharon Evans
At: Live Bait Theatre, 3914 N. Clark St.
Phone: (773) 871-1212; $15-$20
Runs through: July 20
There’s this wine, you see, and its label has a picture of a castle on it This castle is in Tuscany, where the family of the Marchese de Presario has tended the vineyards producing the aforementioned wine since antiquity. And in 1523, a widow who would become a poet of rare significance wrote a letter to one of the Presarios, informing him that his friend, her husband, had died untimely.
And, as we will see in flashback, these are the circumstances that brought two young American newlyweds—a graduate student in Renaissance literature and her wine-expert hub—to Milan, where they met two rebellious descendants of aristocratic clans. Decades later, the consequences of this brief confluence have done their damage—Miranda, now a full professor, wants to divorce Tom, now known to radio audiences as ‘The Wine God,’ while Francesca Falletto of the Piedmontese vineyards blames Felippo Presario and his radical politics for her brother’s death. But if Bacchus has the power to harm, he also has the power to heal, and in the Veritas that emerges from Vino comes wisdom to prevent another pair of impetuous young lovers—sommeliere-in-training Blanche and hand-surgeon Ralph—from being bibulously rent asunder.
Sharon Evans, herself a former sommeliere and thus knowledgeable in the lore of the grape, has crafted a romance as intoxicating as the magic drink it celebrates. Bubbling with sensual rhapsodies of gustatory delight surpassing those of mere carnal pleasures, Blind Tasting celebrates both the giddy infatuation of youth in wary search of happiness and the mature solace of adults realizing the rewards of patience and forgiveness. ‘In wine and friendship, old is better’ says Francesca—in Italian, of course.
Nobody plays spiritual myopia better than Mark Richard, whose Tom inspires both exasperation and affection, flanked by Kelly Lynn Hogan’s intense Miranda and Jennifer Barclay’s wholesome Blanche. Marco Verna’s Filippo and Jenni Fontana’s Francesca argue for the burden of noble ancestry in impeccable regional dialect. (‘Castles and titles,’ shrugs Filippo, ‘they’re either too big or too small.’) Finally, Ian Novak rejects TV-clichés to render Dr. Ralph worthy of the happy-ever-after ending. Together, under Peter Amster’s precise direction, they make for a heady bouquet—and no hangover the morning after.