WILLIAMSTON, Mich.–It’s easy to get lost in this world. With deep love can come deep pain and the world doesn’t always arrange itself so that the love we have can get its full expression.

Chapatti is a heartwarming play, very much the kind of play that Williamston Theatre excels at. But it isn’t simply sweetness and light. It explores a lot of heavy issues–heartbreak, loss, and even questioning how we can get up in the morning some days and go on with our life. It deals with the difficulty of coming out of depression and finding new hope for life.

Lynn Lammers directs this two-person show in which Dan (John Seibert) and Betty (Karen Sheridan) meet in Dublin at a point where there is nothing but melancholy in Dan’s life. He’s lost the love of his life and his ability to laugh. He lives, though, for his dog, Chapatti. Betty is the lonely owner of 19 cats who cares for an embittered woman who wants to die rather than go on with life.

The play begins with a series of monologues as Seibert and Sheridan trade use of the stage, each telling their story and interacting with their pets and the other people who pass through their lives. Playwright Christian O’Reilly has his characters reveal themselves in honest ways, opening their hearts in a rare self-knowledge. He carefully balances when actors actually interact with each other vs. when they simply describe their interactions. It reinforces the sense of isolation that each of these characters have. He could have added additional actors to the story, especially the older woman that Bette cares for. However, by not doing so, O’Reilly is able to say a lot about loneliness, depression and the way these characters have withdrawn from life. It makes their contact even more magical and helps to suspend disbelief about how intense and quickly those relationships grow.

These themes are also underlined by the blocking that Lammers has created for the show. Seibert and Sheridan enter from opposite directions in the beginning and they slowly circle around each other, the distances a palpable thing between them. Much is said in the way they move closer and further from each other, in the pursuit and avoidance.

For this show, the theater added two rows of chairs in the back of the theater, making the stage a theater in the round and Lammers is constantly aware of how her actors are moving, keeping them open to the audience and making use of the corners so they are open to all sides.

This is Sheridan’s debut with Williamston and her performance will leave audiences hoping for more of her in the future. She is full of life as she portrays someone who is generous despite how stingy life has been with her. She has a full, beautiful laugh that fits in perfectly with the character. It is a laugh that beckons Dan to life. She creates a character who is willing to take risks. Perhaps most powerfully is the way Sheridan has Betty listen. There is a depth about Betty that starts with the playwright’s words and then is made more richly textured by Sheridan’s portrayal.

Seibert makes sure his half of the show is as equally strong as Sheridan’s. They are good partners, even if they start out isolated. Seibert expertly invokes the imagination of the audience as he interacts with his dog, with other unseen people and with the grave of the woman he loved for 30 years. He plays the emotional story of this play just right. There is a tension to his emotions—they are on the edge of spilling over, but he holds them just slightly back, never manipulating the audience but always being authentic to their heaviness.

Chapatti is a beautiful love story of adults late in life. It illustrates that the need to be loved never goes away, not even after life has battered at us and no matter how independent we might be. It reminds us that love is not just for teenagers and twentysomethings, but that it continues to shape and mold us throughout our entire life.

This play runs for approximately 90 minutes with no intermission.

Click here for show days, times, and details.