In New York City, where he lives, theater fans know John Cariani as a character actor who can unassumingly, guilelessly ground very different shows. His Broadway debut, as the poor tailor Motel in a “Fiddler on the Roof” revival was nominated for a Tony Award in 2004. Effective turns in “Something Rotten!” (2015), “The Band’s Visit” (2017) and “Caroline, or Change” (2021) followed.
But this is not why Cariani was greeted like a rock star when he dropped by a show at Wagner College Theater, on Staten Island, three years ago.
“It was like I brought Elvis Presley out to the school,” said Jack Cummings III, the artistic director of Transport Group Theater Company who steered the Wagner production. “I was very cool in their eyes because I knew John, and he was seeing their show.”
The kids were going wild because Cariani is also the author of the extraordinarily popular play “Almost, Maine” — which, according to the publisher Concord Theatricals, has had about 8,000 productions around the world since 2006, with 200 booked into 2028.
“Almost, Maine” premiered at Portland Stage in 2004 and ran Off Broadway two years later (the Transport Group revived it, with Cariani in the cast, in 2014.) It is made up of stories set on a winter night in northern Maine, a place very much like Cariani’s hometown, Presque Isle, 20 minutes from the Canadian border. The surreal and the whimsical are never far, but the play is also rooted in daily life in that part of the world, from watching the northern lights’ eerie beauty to dealing with cumbersome snowmobiling clothes.
“I loved where I grew up,” Cariani said. “I remember my friends and I would go outside and look at the stars and hang out. We weren’t very interested in altering ourselves, we were kind of like those kids who were high on life.”
Cariani, 57, has become the unofficial playwright laureate of Maine. He traveled to tiny Stonington this month to check out a production of his latest piece, “Darker the Night, Brighter the Stars,” which is presented by Opera House Arts through Aug. 16. As we sat by the harbor, he kept saying hello to friends and acquaintances. You get the sense he’s open to others, whether they know it or not.
“I like to listen to people talking,” Cariani said. “I just heard someone today go, ‘He texted me. Can you believe that? He [expletive] texted me.’ You just can’t help but go, ‘OK, what happened?’”
You can hear lines in a similar vein in “Darker the Night,” which, like its famous predecessor, strings together short conversations. It premiered last year at Portland Stage as “Not Quite Almost,” then Cariani changed the title so people wouldn’t think of it as an “Almost, Maine” sequel.
The two plays share similarities, though, beyond their storytelling structure. Cariani’s big hit is about “middle-aged people dealing with love and loss and life,” as he put it in a follow-up email. The characters include two boys who took diverging paths, a pregnant teenager and besties who might or might not be ready to explore greater intimacy.
Cariani sees these works, all set in Maine, as part of a bigger seasonal quartet: “Almost, Maine” takes place in winter; “Last Gas” (2010) in spring; “Darker the Night,” summer. “My fall play is going to be the next one. Then I’ll be done with the cycle, and I can move on.”
From what is a little unclear. For starters, he remains a frequent visitor to Maine, especially since his husband also grew up in Presque Isle. “We went to high school together — we went to our prom with our girlfriends,” Cariani said, raising an eyebrow. “And then we re-met when we were 29.”
More broadly, odds are good that he will continue to be drawn to the lives and stories that matter to him: those of the rural, working-class people he feels are underrepresented in contemporary American theater. (Samuel D. Hunter, whose work is almost entirely set in hardscrabble Idaho, is one of the few playwrights to mine, albeit with a different sensibility, a similar sociological and region-based terrain.)
Cariani’s knack for turning concerns that some might deem narrow, corny or provincial into affecting stories helps explain the appeal of “Almost, Maine” and now “Darker the Night.” The plays, which embrace generosity and kindness, resonate with audiences around the country, so much so that even the occasional queer content doesn’t stop the shows from being produced in schools or in conservative areas.
This outlook is braced by Cariani’s belief in emotional authenticity. The current version of the “Darker the Night” script gives background notes that feel like a mini Wikipedia entry about Maine in general and Aroostook County in particular. This comes across less as didactic than as an effort to help productions get the tone right out of respect for the characters and the real people who may have inspired some of them.
Elaine Sipe, who has known Cariani since they were teenagers, helped him run a developmental reading of “Darker the Night” with young Aroostook County residents. In a phone interview, she recalled everyone as being in tears at the end of a scene. “We knew that hit the same nerve that these kids were living in today’s world,” Sipe said. “It was like, ‘Who am I? Who could I be? Is it all right if I’m not the person that people think they know now?’”
This kind of response is important to Cariani, who wants his work to ring true, and to be done and seen by a wide range of people. “I’ve spent so much time in places where theaters don’t have any money, and I think it’s important to do plays without much stuff so that people can do them,” he said. He deliberately creates plays that don’t require elaborate costumes or sets, and his casting can be equally flexible. A theater can stage “Almost, Maine” with as few as four cast members and as many as 19; “Darker the Night” has a similar M.O., with the director in Stonington, Kathryn Markey, choosing to use six actors there.
The actor-playwright combination isn’t that uncommon — Tracy Letts comes to mind, or the emerging Bubba Weiler. In February, for example, Cariani is set to appear in the new musical “The Gorgeous Nothings” at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in New York. And yet he maintains a hands-on interest in even the most modest productions of the plays he writes.
Markey, who also serves as artistic director of Opera House Arts, recalls that Cariani once asked if she could loan props from the Stonington production of “Almost, Maine” to a high school. “That matters to him as much as the really great shows he’s been in on Broadway,” she said. “And I just can’t think of another person who’s like that.”
There’s a practical aspect to this ethos that might be linked to living in an area where it’s less easy than in a big city to escape family, friends or neighbors, and that is reflected in “Darker the Night.”
“In the new play I’m interested in people trying to figure things out, solve problems together,” Cariani said. “I think we forget that there’s a lot of drama in trying to arrive at common ground because it takes you to really dark places, and then you eventually get there.” He laughed. “Trying to get along is actually very dramatic.”
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