Shots in the dark

Love Sick
The Guild, Charlottetown
November 6, 2025

In any theatre community, one sees patterns in people’s projects. Up-and-coming director Alyssa Malone, for instance, impressed me last February with Drawstring Productions’ shoestring production of Venus in Fur, an edgy 2010s play in which a perhaps preternatural, possibly imaginary seductress beguiles the protagonist; and Malone’s November follow-up Love Sick is an edgy 2010s play in which, among other things, a perhaps preternatural, possibly imaginary seducer beguiles the protagonist. Like I said, patterns. 

To be fair, these are two very different plays, and Love Sick is more ambitious—more characters, more plot threads, more settings, more tones, more spectacle—but I liked Venus in Fur better than Love Sick, mostly because the latter play’s script and its main character strike me as somewhat less coherent. 

Penned by American playwright and Drama Desk nominee Kristina Poe in 2011, Love Sick is the story of Emily (played here by Jenna Marie Holmes), mired in self-pity since her husband Jeff (Colin Hood) left her for younger woman Lexi (Abbigail Buchan). Emily’s downward spiral drives her to murder, blackmail, cigarettes, group therapy and cathartic medicinal disco (often my drug of choice), all to little avail until an intense reunion with Jeff brings Emily some hard-won clarity. 

Poe’s script boasts a real grabber of an opening (the aftermath of Emily’s first murder), a black comedic streak with a sly sense of the absurd, perceptive observations on the nature of romantic relationships, and some genuinely moving emotional moments—but it’s never fully clear what kind of story Poe’s trying to tell, or what kind of character Emily’s meant to be. 

Act One has a darkly cartoony vibe with its gun-toting, cavalierly murderous Emily; her all-consumingly hedonistic mother (a sunnily vulgar Sara Underwood); sleazy therapist Jerry Fortuna (Noah Nazim at his silkily saturnine best); Jerry’s cultishly sheeplike group therapy pawns Shelly, Chris, and Inez (played with pathetic aplomb by Kailea Switzer, Lucas Panizzi, and Mireille Poirier); and a smoothly charming Malachi Rowsell as Emily’s anonymous advisor/admirer and self-appointed fairy godmother “The Man,” full of eerie insights and unsubtle come-ons like some Harlequin Romance version of the Phantom Stranger. 

The closest thing to a regular person in Act One is Emily’s ill-fated lone friend, Don (a twitchy Mike Mallaley); irrationally blaming Don for not preventing Chris from leaving her, Emily threatens to kill Don on a whim but ultimately settles for framing him for murder and blackmailing him into helping cover up her crimes. 

The text’s handling of Don is part of why Act Two doesn’t quite work for me. When Emily pivots back in the general direction of sanity, she expresses regret about some of her actions—but not so much the murders, nor her betrayal of Don. This helps make the play’s semi-happy ending feel both implausible and unearned, not to mention some serious tonal whiplash. 

That said, there’s fun to be had on the way to that problematic ending. Some of it comes from Emily’s unhinged thrill-killer phase, campily drunk on her newfound capacity for sensation like murderous alien menace Sylvia from Star Trek episode “Catspaw” (1967); and some of it comes from Emily’s softer, saner side, since in a play packed with big, broad characters she often seems like the least crazy person on stage. Holmes plays this expertly, hilariously radiating Bob Newhart levels of quiet awkwardness as she reacts to Poe’s parade of weirdos; but she also nails bigger moments of rage, anguish, glee, you name it, a great showcase for an adroitly versatile performer. Another cast standout is Hood, who starts off a bit stiff but musters enough searing, visceral emotion to make the Emily-Jeff confrontation a memorable highlight. 

Malone has a bigger sandbox to play in here, this being an ACT production (part of that august company’s 30th anniversary) staged at The Guild. There are occasional hiccups—the gunplay’s not always convincing, and a theoretically climactic moment in Act Two feels muted—but Malone’s ensemble is strong, veteran stage manager Sharon MacDonald’s crew is admirably able, and the show makes solid use of the venue’s capacity for projected backgrounds. Love Sick is another feather in ACT’s anniversary cap and another success for its talented director.