The Last Wide Open at NC Stage Co.

Roberto and Lina both work at Frankie’s, a trattoria, but it’s midnight, long after closing, and they each have a lot of emotional baggage to unpack — and in The Last Wide Open, now onstage at the North Carolina Stage Company, they unpack it three times. In each of what are essentially three one-act plays exploring the possible dynamics of their (maybe) love connection, these two striving souls reach out and — do they touch? Does the audience want them to get together? And if they do find love, is it by fate or by choice?

There’s a lot going on in The Last Wide Open, and it takes the full length of the 90-minute show for the viewer to put all the pieces together, which makes for an engaging, finally revelatory evening of theater. There’s much to discuss afterward with your seatmates. I won’t spoil all the thematic threads here, any more than I already have, except to say that the play lives comfortably at the intersection of thought and feeling.

Now and again, the show verges into meta-theater, with the two actors — Arusi Santi, as Italian-born Roberto, and Heather Michele Lawler, as oft-unlucky Lina — occasionally addressing or even polling the audience, but these breaks of the fourth wall are strategically placed by playwright Audrey Cefaly so as not to disrupt the drama of each scenario. Instead, the interruptions underline the evening’s agenda—not just to enjoy but to consider.

There are also songs, by Matthew M. Nielson, which Lina/Heather introduces by saying, “All the songs are bad, and that’s kind of the point.” They’re not bad, of course, but they’re also more punctuation than production numbers — simple and short, either coalescing a character’s feelings (“The Confession Song”) or pausing for a moment of humor. This is not a musical nor a revue. It’s a play… with some not-bad songs.

In the three-plus scenes, the performers conjure three versions of their characters: The struggling duo we first meet and two more variations on how their lives might have gone, which I’ll leave theatergoers to discover for fhemselves. Each variation includes some repeated incidents—a phone call, descriptions of an ill-mannered diner and a doomed neighbor, and so on—that tie the scenes together smartly and provide touchstones that reveal the differences in the three Robertos and Linas. I have my own theory about what’s going on here, but I doubt Cefaly has a single metaphysical explanation; I bet she welcomes audiences to imagine their own.

Santi’s often intense, always spot-on, performance as Roberto is the bedrock of this production; he radiates emotion in every scene. Lina is more lightly imagined, tasked with the greater portion of the show’s humor, and Lawler gives a modulated performance that varies skillfully with the ever-changing requirements of her character. The dialogue is more utilitarian than eloquent — the way people really talk — but director Charlie Flynn McIver smooths over the rough spots in Cafely’s script by maintaining a tone that’s playful but grounded, with welcome digressions into comedy and chaos. Every element of the show — the music, the emotion, Santi’s gravitas, and Lawler’s vulnerability — beautifully converges for a last line that’s the most perfect closer for a new show that' I’ve heard in years..

The Last Wide Open may be a meditation on destiny but this particular production also a story of fate and recovery in a real-world context: It was scheduled to open in October 2024 but was waylaid by the devastation of Hurricane Helene. The charming, authentic set, by Michael Amico, sat in storage for months before the stars realigned for this production finally to open on June 19. However your life has changed since then, The Last Wide Open will give you a chance to consider how things might have been — and perhaps how things could never have been. Check it out.

The Last Wide Open runs Wednesday through Sunday through July 13 For details and tickets, visit ncstage.org.