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Is the Capitol Corridor train on track to meet an increase in riders?

By Odin Rasco
This article was originally published on 05.03.2021 in the Sacramento News & Review

Sitting on a time-worn wooden bench in Sacramento Valley Station, Noah Williams, 22, remarks that the train station is the most crowded he has seen since he started regularly riding the Capitol Corridor over two years ago. 

“I don’t have a car, so I don’t really have a choice other than the train,” Williams said. “I ride Capitol Corridor every couple weeks or so to visit my family on weekends off from school.”

In the past couple months, Williams has noticed that the trains have grown busier again, particularly in the mornings.

The increase in riders will only continue in the coming months, as more people return to their work and schools in-person. With the vaccine available to train crews and riders, many are also growing more confident about getting back on the trains. 

Capitol Corridor, a train service that runs between Sacramento and San Francisco and surrounding areas, mainly serves commuters. Ridership saw a precipitous drop to only 10% of normal during the height of the Covid-19 stay-at-home orders, but Capitol Corridor has started rolling out steps to return to its pre-pandemic operations. Though a surge in riders stemming from many people having moved to the greater Sacramento area in 2020 may be on the horizon, Capitol Corridor is confident that it will be up to the task.

An estimated 24,000 people a year moved to the Sacramento area from the Bay Area between 2014 and 2019, according to the Greater Sacramento Economic Council, and that number is likely far higher for 2020. Data analyzed by the real estate site Redfin indicate that house prices went up 14%, sold weeks sooner when placed on the market, and that sales of more expensive houses in the region went up by 86% in 2020. Redfin attributed a majority of the increased demand to people moving to Sacramento from the Bay as work-from-home policies began to grow more common.

In a midyear budget review meeting in February, Sacramento City Council attributed an unexpected increase in revenues from property and sales taxes to the same influx of new residents moving from the Bay Area now working from home. Soon, however, many of these new Sacramento area residents may be called upon to return to work, and Rob Padgette, managing director of Capitol Corridor. He expects many Bay Area transplants to turn to the Capitol Corridor service for their new commute. 

“We will benefit from a lot of the individuals that have moved up here, and hope we will carry a lot of those folks,” Padgette said. “This reinforces the need to invest in this rail corridor between Sacramento and the Bay Area long-term because we don’t see it slowing down at all in the future.”

While Capitol Corridor has plans to expand service in early June, Padgette anticipates that the real surge in riders will come later in 2021.

“My guess is to see a real jump in ridership in September, when schools and offices really begin to reopen. That’s when we’re going to see our ridership really take a big jump,” Padgette observed. “We still have to monitor health conditions — god forbid there’s a change in the trajectory. But right now it seems we are through the worst of it.”

Claire Chavez, 28, said she hadn’t used the Capitol Corridor service in over a year because of COVID concerns. Chavez said she now feels as safe riding the train as she did used to before the pandemic.

Luckily for riders like Chavez, Padgette anticipates that the influx of new residents will not have as significant impact on train crowding, taking into account that many major employers in the Bay Area such as Facebook, Salesforce, Apple, and Google have all announced plans to reopen in limited capacities, with many employees only having to come into the office once or twice a week.

TESTIMONIAL: My hard road back to ‘normal’

By Odin Rasco
This article was originally published on 05.09.22 by The State Hornet

I’ve struggled with my mental health for almost as long as I can remember. I can vividly recall my first panic attack, seven years old and horrified at the uncertainty of what would happen after I died.

I sat under the covers on the top bunk of my metal-framed bed with the chipped red paint, screaming with confusion and terror as I was gripped by a cold, creeping feeling I could not process or even understand at the time. I’ve gotten better at navigating such issues in time, but the unease I feel with unsure situations and possibilities is still a constant.

I am so tired of uncertainty.

‘Unprecedented times’ is no longer an appropriate phrase to describe our current situation; we have over two full years of precedence to look to, but somehow we still have no idea what to expect. There do not seem to be any clear, consistent steps in place towards a more permanent ‘normal,’ and yet the campus, state and country seem determined to get there even when the COVID-19 numbers continue to rise.

Uncertainty surrounds situations that used to be trivial; will I be going to class in person? Virtually? Masked? Unmasked? Even after returning to campus on Feb. 7, I don’t think I’m alone in wondering if we will receive an email one day announcing that the COVID-19 case numbers have spiked again.

For over two years, we have been asked to adapt; asked to roll with the punches. I’ve had enough of rolling, and I can only assume that many others have too.

We somehow live in a time where nothing is new, but we also do not know what to expect next. We are living in a time that asks so much, too much of us mentally and emotionally, just to exist.

As students, the difficulties are only compounded by managing time, finances, paperwork and assignments. Add to that the hardships faced by people like myself with mental health challenges and you have a recipe for hardship on a near-daily basis.

Coming back to campus meant that even my basic routine had to change. I obviously couldn’t follow the playbook for last year, rolling out of bed mere minutes before I had to log into class via Zoom; I had to plan around an hour-long commute (and the price of gas that goes along with that).

I couldn’t just have wild hair and wear pajamas all day, my camera turned off; I had to put on real clothes – pants! I had to wear pants again, like it was 2019 or something.

Getting dressed and driving to school are the least of my problems (though current gas prices might make driving a bit more of an active concern). Pants were not the reason I fainted during a lecture in October, disrupting class and having to endure the embarrassment of having an ambulance called for me. Commuting to class is not why I have had to miss the equivalent of weeks of classes due to my mental health deteriorating.

The problem has been navigating life in a world that didn’t exist before lockdowns, shelter-in-place orders and COVID-19.

As I’ve grown older, the list of diagnoses has grown as well; depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, insomnia and chronic panic attacks. There have been days, weeks, even months at a time that have been so dominated by my struggles just to remain functional that I can barely remember them and I have absolutely nothing to show for the time spent other than my continued existence (admittedly, given some context to come, even that is a bit of an achievement).

For many, 2020 and 2021 were some of the hardest years of their lives.

The hardest year of my life happened in 2019; I was laid off, my grandfather died, my pet cat and dog both died, and I lost my car in an accident. Twice that year found myself writing suicide notes and driving off to what was intended to be my oblivion.

I spent three days in an inpatient mental health facility and found myself in a depressive episode which consumed the greater part of a year, which I only began to work through close to the final months. Despite this, I continued writing and producing a full-length show of comedy and music (charmingly titled “I Can’t Believe I’m Not Better!”) and finishing the process of applying to Sacramento State to finally finish my degree. By the start of 2020, I truly felt that I might have made it through to the other side.

In 2020, I spent months of my life in a single room in Arden-Arcade that rivaled the size of my best friend’s closet (mind you, she does have a pretty impressive closet, but the fact remains) – just enough space to fit a bed, a bookshelf, a desk, and a wardrobe, and less than ample space to walk between those pieces of furniture.

As friends fell out of touch, as the world shut down and threatened to stay that way, I began to slip back. Some days, my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder was so overwhelming that I would sit, debilitated, in my room for hours at a time just trying to mentally organize and categorize every item in my room, over and over again.

By the time classes began in earnest, I was eager for a routine again and threw myself into my studies as best I could. When my mental health was particularly precarious, I had the mild comfort of knowing that I could still just sit in on my classes and nobody had to be any the wiser save the rare days where it was severe enough that I had to just stay in bed and do nothing at all.

Of course, that option was stripped away when classes returned to what we used to call ‘normal.’ The hour-long commute, the early mornings and late nights required to get to class and get the work done; the energy spent just trying to function even when the days were hard. This semester’s return to ‘normal’ meant that many things that had ceased to be my ‘normal’ all came back at once, and the emotional toll was severe.

I lost sleep stressing over assignments and coursework and missed classes to take time to get the rest I missed, creating a cycle that had the potential to spiral ever downward. Group projects, discussions, even just the reality of trying to remember how to behave “normal” in a classroom setting all just required that much extra effort while I was already trying to keep a lid on my emotions which were liable to spill out at the slightest provocation.

The stresses built up, exacerbated by the stress inherent in being a full-time student working a part-time job. In October, the stress had reached the point where I found myself driving and wailing on the phone at midnight to stand in the cold, black night at the edge of a bridge; I didn’t finish what I had aimed for that night, but the urge was still strong for weeks after the fact.

I worked to get in touch with a counselor or therapist, a process that doesn’t call attention to itself, even when physically tucked to the side in the WELL. For months, I tried to make appointments only to be rebuffed by the automated scheduling system or told that nobody was available by receptionists at the front desk.

I finally secured an appointment in October and after sitting on a waitlist following initial consultation, I had my first appointment in December. The work has only begun for me, finding tools to handle my struggles while trying to find the capability to use them.

Why would I be so personal in this article (other than the fact that I am afforded the freedom to do so because I get to write an opinion piece for once)? Why write out my failings, my fears, my struggles in such a public forum as this, a school paper with a sizable circulation?

Because I know that my story is not wholly unique.

The post-COVID experience has taken a toll on so many of us with our return to “normal” bringing back old stresses without removing any of the new ones. These last few semesters have been hard, and the future outside of college will be too, I am certain. We will continue to struggle, and we will continue to be asked to adapt by systems that want a “normal” that may not even be achievable any longer.

However, I know we can make it through this, because we are not alone.

Looking beyond land acknowledgements: Sac State’s history sitting on Native land

By Chrissy Martinez and Odin Rasco
This article was originally published on 12.02.21 by The State Hornet

Sacramento State is located on Miwok, Maidu and Nisenan land, tribes in California’s central valley, according to historians and local Native American organizations, such as the Sacramento Native American Health Center.

As awareness of colonization, land-grant universities, and stolen land grows, some institutions began practicing land acknowledgements, written and oral addresses that acknowledge the Native land universities sit on.

In California alone there are over 109 federally recognized tribes. Sacramento is also located on Wintu land, according to Rose Soza War Soldier, professor of ethnic studies at Sac State. Rose, who is Mountain Maidu, Cahuilla and Luiseño herself, emphasized that Native people are still here.

These acknowledgements aim to recognize Native communities as the original stewards. For example, Sac State’s own Associated Students Inc. has adopted the practice, reading a land acknowledgement during each of its public meetings.

To understand the origin of land acknowledgements, one must look at the history of colonization. Lands that had been home to Indigenous peoples for countless centuries were systematically taken over and redistributed among colonizers, displacing and killing Native people according to historians such as Benjamin Madley in his book “An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873.”

This process was seen throughout the region now deemed the United States, and as such many landmarks and institutions, including the Sacramento State campus, are built on stolen Native land.

Rose explained to The State Hornet why land acknowledgements are considered an important gesture, as land is particularly significant in many Indigenous cultures. Rose has a doctoral degree in history with an emphasis in American Indian history.

“Most Native societies have a concept about us belonging to the land,” Rose said. “And so, we don’t own the land, we are stewards of the land. I think that it’s important for all folks, in any shape or form affiliated with the university, to know the names of the folks of the land base that the campus is built on.”

As Rose said, part of the importance of land acknowledgements is to remember that those Native American people are still around today.

One such group of local Native Americans is the Wilton Rancheria, a federally recognized tribe located in Elk Grove, California. They are primarily associated with Nisenan and Miwok ancestors, though there are many members who have a background that also includes other tribes across the country, according to Dahlton Brown, executive director of administration for the tribe.

The Wilton Rancheria historically exists near Wilton, California, before the rancheria system, a type of reservation in California, was no longer seen as a federally recognized entity. The rancheria system was a result of a series of legislation passed in the early 1900s that provided funds for landless Native Americans to purchase small plots of land in central and northern California, according to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

As part of the U.S. government’s overarching policy of Indian Termination, the rancheria system was dissolved by Congress through a law passed in 1958 called the California Rancheria Termination Act, according to historians such as R. Warren Metcalf in his book, “Termination’s Legacy: The Discarded Indians of Utah.”

The policy of Indian Termination aimed to force Native Americans to integrate into “mainstream society,” according to Metcalf. As a result, the Wilton Rancheria only reacquired their status as a federally recognized tribe in 2009.

Though land acknowledgements can be considered a step in the right direction, the concern is that institutions may adopt them and consider their debts paid, rather than working to address deeper-rooted injustices stemming from their presence on stolen land, according to Brown. A land acknowledgement is something that, if done by itself with no action to back it up, can ring hollow and performative, Rose said.

“Acknowledgement is one thing, but atonement is another,” Brown said. “It’s one thing to acknowledge the land on which an institution sits, but it’s another thing to actively atone for and to try and make amends for the violent history that often led to that institution’s founding and the possession of that land.”

Brown said that while a land acknowledgement is a step, the institution issuing that acknowledgement has to look at what else it is and how it should serve Native Americans.

For Sac State such services could include creation of pathways for Native students to enroll at Sac State, active communication and involvement with local tribe leadership, hiring Native faculty and providing a resource center for Native students on campus, Brown said.

Native students have campaigned for a new Native student center at Sac State, and one is slated to open in fall 2022. Actions like these are what Brown meant by atonement: active choices to support the Native American students and faculty on campus.

But even the student center may only be the start of that atonement process. For Native students at Sac State, feeling represented on campus is something that has yet to be achieved.

“Sac State lies on land of Indigenous tribes yet we never see any of that Indigenous representation on campus,” said Amanda Croteau, an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation and president of Sac State’s Ensuring Native Indians Traditions Club. “I feel in that way, I’m not really represented on campus or seen by the faculty and staff, just because they don’t put in much effort to want to learn about the cultures.”

Are Sacramento’s travel and hospitality industries starting to recover from COVID?

By Odin Rasco
This article was originally published on 05.31.2021 in the Sacramento News & Review

As the world rushed to enact measures aimed at mitigating the impact from COVID-19 in early 2020, one of the first decisions many countries made was to severely limit travel. Countries closed their borders, nixed flights both international and domestic, and encouraged residents to shelter in their homes. 

A year has now passed and Sacramento businesses that rely on travel for their survival are only beginning to see trends that hint towards a return to ‘normal’. 

Sacramento airports had a total of 1,047,798 passengers in March 2019; in March 2020, Sacramento airports saw the number of passengers drop over 49%, to only 527,890 people, according to reports from the Sacramento County Airport System. By March 2021, a year after the first wave of travel restrictions, traffic through Sacramento airports had only risen 9.3% from last March, still significantly below pre-pandemic numbers.

The hope is that the trend seen in recent months, with more passengers returning to the skies, continues forward and through the summer, said Scott Johnston, a public information officer for the Sacramento County Department of Airports. 

The unprecedented drop in travel did provide a mild silver lining for the Capital City’s runways: Prior to the pandemic, the airport was seeing capacity issues at the gates and with parking. The lower numbers of passengers during the pandemic have given its team valuable time to develop plans to address growing their capacity once travel returns to normal. 

With such a significant drop in travelers coming through Sacramento, it comes as no surprise that hotels in the region have been hit hard. The Wyndham Garden hotel near the airport, as well as the Hyatt Regency Sacramento, the Citizen Hotel, and the Amber House Inn of Midtown – located in or near downtown Sacramento – all reported an estimated 50%-70% drop in business from previous years. 

Some hotels were not able to be open for months at a time. The Hyatt Regency Sacramento at 1209 L St. had to close completely from mid-March to late June, according to Brenda Kirian, director of sales and marketing for the hotel. 

Even hotels that remained open without interruption saw a severe hit to business. The Citizen Hotel, located on J Street, stayed open through the year but faced continued hardships. 

“We saw a drop of around 70% from normal during the last year. Our business was totally decimated,” said Austin Pringle, a manager at The Citizen Hotel. “We saw a reduction in staff; had to let some go, a majority were furloughed; but the hotel remained open the whole time. And we weathered the storm better than many others in the area.”

With a rise in vaccination rates, as well as recently loosened CDC safety restrictions, are hotels are noting a rise in reservations, but nothing approaching the levels they were at before the coronavirus hit. 

“Some weekends, recently, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we have been operating at full capacity again, with rooms entirely sold out,” said Evelyn Fernandez, general manager of the Wyndham Garden. “But we are still working at a lower capacity, not fully operational like we would have been pre-COVID. We are still working in a limited capacity, calling some furloughed employees back now.” 

Though the vaccination push has led to a mild increase in travel, the future is still unclear. Part of that uncertainty lies in how unclear the guidelines across regions are. 

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announcement made on May 13 could loosen safety guidelines and mask requirements – and hopefully lead to an increase in air travel. But it doesn’t change current requirements for masks at Sacramento International Airport, Johnston noted. Although the CDC has relaxed its guidelines in certain settings, rules for prevention still apply to travelers. In fact, the Transportation Security Administration mandate requiring masks and face coverings in airports and on aircraft, and surface transportation, has been extended through Sept. 13.

Other uncertainties also keep the future unclear for both travel and hospitality, including discrepancies between federal, state, and local restrictions, as well as a lack of clarity as to when government buildings and event centers will reopen.

“There are not as many reservations as calls coming in,” Kirian said. “There’s so much confusion with what’s allowed by federal guidelines, state guidelines, county guidelines, and nobody knows what is for sure. It will really depend on when the capitol opens up, and when state buildings open again. There’s talk of things happening on June 15, but it isn’t concrete yet. After that is set in stone, I think it’ll get busy overnight. There is just so much pent-up demand.”

Reviews

Review: Gore Vidal’s ‘The Best Man’ at Sutter Street Theatre

A pleasant evening of theatre seated near a loud fan

By Odin Rasco
This article was originally published on 03.18.22 by The State Hornet

In drafting this review, I was faced with a dilemma; how does one fairly review a show when the primary complaint is a noisy neighbor? And what if that neighbor is the cause of consternation and comfort simultaneously? 

On the whole, I had a pleasurable evening seeing Sutter Street Theatre’s production of Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man” last weekend. The play is remarkably poignant despite being over 60 years old. 

The story follows presidential hopeful Bill Russel as he tries to clinch the party nomination while staying true to his principles. Opposing Russel is Joe Cantwell, a politician willing to do anything to grab the nomination – to him, the end always justifies the means. Pulled between the two is the ailing Art Hocksteader, the former president whose support would be vital to locking the candidacy. 

The cast performed admirably; Bill Russel’s collegiate nervousness is brought out through Tom Loeprich’s ability to smoothly switch from glib lines paired with loose, almost fidgety physicality at one moment to strong focus and firm posture when switching into politician mode. Mark Ludwig’s voice carries the perfect balance of venomous creature and used car salesman to portray Joe Cantwell as the epitome of a politician; always focused on the next move. 

The show-stealer of the production is Stephen Kauffman whose portrayal of Art Hocksteader, the last of the ‘hick’ presidents is enough to justify paying  full ticket price for the show. Hocksteader is a magnetic personality; the last of an old guard on the way out and drawn to stir up some political drama one last time, and Kauffman’s delicate balance of sincerity, authority and mischief is perfect for the role.

The sole complaint against the production is a byproduct of the intimate nature of the theatre. Sutter Street Theatre by my estimate has seating for something to the tune of fifty audience members and is very close to the stage itself. 

In many ways, this is an absolute boon; actors can bring a subtlety to their movements and expressions that would be wasted on a larger and more distant audience and the setting does lend itself towards a more engrossing focus on the action at hand. 

The only problem is a certain noisy neighbor.

The rub is that Sutter Street Theatre has opted to install a high-efficiency particulate air filter into this very small venue. I admit that the comfort of knowing that such a system was close by and working did assuage the fears I have had about returning to theatres and sitting for hours in a crowd of strangers. 

Unfortunately, the machine which has been charmingly dubbed “Mr. HEPA” is not a quiet one, and the constant fan noise that came from its location directly off of the stage was a constant distraction that served to make quieter moments of dialogue hard to catch. I have no fix for the issue, however; in many ways, I think the safety provided may well be worth the distraction it may cause, but I feel I would be remiss if I had not mentioned it in this review.

Even with Mr. HEPA’s tendency towards being a noisy neighbor in the theatre, I still feel that “The Best Man” is a show that is most certainly worth making the time to go see.

REVIEW: The early hours of FromSoftware’s beautiful, deadly masterpiece, Elden Ring

By Odin Rasco
This article was originally published on 03.16.22 by The State Hornet

I find myself stepping carefully along a narrow foothold at the side of a chasm following a faint blue thread of light that hangs in the air which leads to the entrance of a crypt below. I hop down, hoping that the fall won’t hurt, or at least won’t outright kill me and roll as I hit the ground, getting back up on my feet just in time for a giant crab to charge forward from behind and crush me to death.

The next time around, following a trek back to the cliff from the nearest respawn point, I made sure to drop down behind the crab this time and managed to survive.

The most important thing to bear in mind while playing “Elden Ring” is that the game does not treat death as a punishment; dying is not failure, but part of the learning process. And in the twenty or so hours I’ve played so far, I have had many chances to learn.

The discourse that often surrounds FromSoftware, the studio behind “Elden Ring”, “Dark Souls” and “Bloodborne”, among others, is that they make games that are overwhelmingly difficult.

At times I have run from a respawn point to a hard encounter over and over again hoping to make progress through sheer stubbornness; the gameplay equivalent of slamming one’s head into a wall until it collapses.

Keeping my eyes open and learning the attack patterns of the enemies and layout of where I encounter them, I slowly gain the tools I need as a player to overcome the challenge.

Therein lies the trick of “Elden Ring”; leveling up your character is certainly vital for progression, but just as important is growing your own skills as a player. It is a game where improvement is more than the numbers on the screen getting bigger.

The game is littered with bosses that test the limit of the player’s skill; tenacity is a must, but learning their patterns and the range of their attacks is vital to overcoming them. The “brick wall v. head” approach can help, but it alone will not carry the day.

Eventually, encounters will feel easier not because the boss is weaker but because the player themselves has grown better at it.

The combat is intense; a mix of frenetic action and deliberate pacing and positioning depending on the enemies you encounter and the way you want to tackle the situation. I prefer a mix of spellcasting and light sword combat to have long and short range options covered.

The options for combat are more comprehensive than previous titles made by FromSoftware, adding more stealth opportunities in addition to a bevy of weapons from a shortsword to a hammer that is more than half the size of the player, among plenty of others.

The story, penned in part by George R. R. Martin of “Game of Thrones” fame/infamy, is largely told through implication; gleaned through item descriptions, dialogue and the environment itself.

And oh, what an environment; the moment I exited the tutorial cave and stepped out to gaze upon the wide region known as The Lands Between, I was struck by the beauty of this world dotted with ruins and dominated by grand, glowing trees that reached across the skies. The world is presented in a muted palette, evocative of a painting stained by smoke and time.

The sense of adventure and exploration in Elden Ring is comparable only to 2017’s “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild”, where the player is given a map with minimal markings on it past the ones you make yourself.

When weaving between trees to find a cave tucked between a tree trunk and a rocky outcropping heading into the face of a cliff, it feels as though you’ve stumbled upon a landmark forgotten by time, and that you may be the first person to have entered it in ages.

The world is marked by signs of life; messages, ghosts, bloodstains, and summon signs left behind by other players playing their own game, writing their own stories and overlapping the player’s for only a moment. Players can leave hints, messages of support, or, occasionally even lies saying that jumping off a cliff may lead to a secret path; all small reminders that the player may be alone in the game world, but they are not in the real one.

This review is an early impressions review, as the 20 or so hours I have put into the game have yet to even scratch the surface of this deep and expansive game, but I cannot wait to keep playing. I encountered little to no performance issues while playing on the Playstation 5, but I have heard from numerous sources that performance may be inconsistent on PC currently.

The Lands Between are often unforgiving and full of death, but they also hold the key to the almost meditative experience of roaming the wilds and reflecting on losses in pursuit of success. I look forward to the adventures I have ahead of me in “Elden Ring”.

There are significant challenges to overcome which may prove frustrating for players, but the world, gameplay and unparalleled sense of accomplishment to be found in “Elden Ring” make the game something I highly recommend trying out for yourself.

Review: ‘Hamlet’ at Sacramento Theatre Company

By Odin Rasco
This article was originally published on 03.05.20 in the Sacramento News & Review

5/5

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is an exceedingly ambitious choice of play to put on. Unedited, a production can easily stretch longer than three hours, and the play’s success lives or dies on the skill of the actor playing the titular character. Every performer must deliver their lines of centuries-old dialogue with such clear intent and emotion that even a Shakespeare neophyte would find them not only understandable, but compelling.

Such pitfalls, and numerous more, make even the decision to attempt Hamlet one that should be commended. Sacramento Theatre Company's production is deserving of the highest praise, as it avoids each pitfall expertly.

The play begins with an absolute spectacle. The ghost scenes, played out in pitch black—lit only by the character's flashlights as the king's spectre magically moves from place to place—are truly incredible. The minimalist set is elegant in its simplicity and versatility, with changes achieved through just the movement of scrims hanging from the ceiling.

The costumes are fantastic—modern and simple while bearing elements that hearken to more traditional garb. The script is masterfully pared down to a comfortable two hours and 20 minutes run time, without feeling like any depth or detail was lost in the process. Every single actor in the play does a superb job, with Ian Hopps' standout performance as Hamlet being particularly noteworthy.

If you only see one play this month, perhaps even this year, this play's the thing.

Review: ‘Almost, Maine’ at Chautauqua Playhouse

By Odin Rasco
This article was originally published on 02.13.20 in the Sacramento News & Review

4/5

Playwright John Cariani is very direct with his instructions for actors and directors in his notes for Almost, Maine: “This play is almost bad. It toes the line. Don’t let it be bad. Make it good. Great, even.”

Chautauqua Playhouse’s production of the play confidently stays on the “good” side of that line.

New romances come to life, old flames die out, an unlikely pair realize their friendship may run deeper than they’re ready for—all of these vignettes unfold in the almost-town of Almost, Maine. The entire cast excels at bringing the diverse group of characters to life, grounding some of the more magical scenes in authentic emotion.

One notable moment at the start of Act Two with astronomy nerd Pete (Terry Randolph) happens wordlessly, and yet just the expression on Randolph’s face says volumes.

Considering the technical aspects, much is made of the small space available. The set is simple, but there is clear care put into the small details of the house and backdrop of a winter sky. The lighting design is fantastic, painting the “sky” and stage in tones of blue and purple that add to the play’s overall dreaminess.

A collection of love stories colored by moments of joy, laughter and devastation, all taking place underneath the shifting hues of the Northern Lights, the play is sweet but not saccharine, cute but not cloying. If you take a trip to see Almost, Maine, you may fall in love, too.

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