What happens when you take a former Daily Free Press columnists and add potentially fatal heart disease and classic sketch comedy?
A delightful oxymoron: the horrifyingly funny ‘Tales of a Broken Heart (Not a Love Story),’ a candid one-man, one-act depiction of co-writer and protagonist Marcello Illarmo’s (a 2000 College of Arts ‘ Sciences graduate) battle with a heart condition.
Illarmo, along with co-writer and director Gregory Reimann (a 2001 CAS graduate who is now a College of Engineering graduate student), has created a BU alumni powerhouse production. Coincidentally, they also shared the ‘Two Blue Monkeys’ column at the Daily Free Press in 1999.
The play traces the true story of Illarmo’s encounter with heart disease, which came soon after he graduated from Boston University. What started with ambiguous flu-like symptoms led to a diagnosis of dilated cardiomyopathy, a disease that usually affects middle-aged men and progresses quickly. In Illarmo’s case, arrhythmia led to surgery, significant relapses and even the possibility of a heart transplant.
The primitive set and lack of other characters allows the audience to focus solely on the clean-cut and ever-charismatic performer and the poignant story he tells. Illarmo is the polo-and-khakis wearing type of guy who knows everyone at the party. People gravitate toward him in hopes of absorbing some of his happy-go-lucky attitude. You want to drag him off stage, tell him he can’t really be so ill and take him out for a night of drinks and good conversation.
Witty depictions of his illness interlace with descriptions of how the condition affects his interactions with friends and family. The tale resembles the type of human-interest piece that might appear in The Onion. Through the many levels of pain Illarmo endures (including the more common form of heartbreak his lingering affection toward his estranged ex-girlfriend Leslie), he gripes and groans but never forgets that laughter is still the best medicine.
Although it contains the thespian accuracy only accessible to someone who has literally lived the story he tells, the pace of the play is slow at times. It features a myriad of monologues interrupted by an excess of one-liners, voiceovers and random musical interludes. The play exchanges a dramatic pretense for a stream-of-consciousness style, where Illarmo tells his story with the level of anecdotal staging that 20-something friends usually reserve for juicy weekend gossip.
What saves the audience is the quality of the one-liners, which usually refer to his genuine Guamanian heritage and resilient aphrodisia. Illarmo leaves you doubled over with laughter in response to disturbing issues. These range from imitations of his constantly vomiting hospital roommate to the risk of dying from too much sodium, (the latter which leads to an epic battle with a carrot).
Despite the comic sentiment, there is no clichéd happy ending. True to life, Illarmo’s story leaves him wanting a full cure and another chance with the ever-elusive Leslie, who eventually acquires a new boyfriend.
Nevertheless, Illarmo does get the last laugh. The play leaves you with a sympathetic yet amused feeling derived from Illarmo’s contagious optimism that overcomes a disease that came so close to killing him.
His final epiphany, inspired by the heroism of President Franklin Roosevelt’s example of living a full life regardless of his sickness, concludes that life is worth living.
Illarmo lives the credo that survivors should take advantage of second chances. His path to post-bedridden happiness ends the play with a performance from his one-man ukulele band. The Low Sodium Hookers, where he croons an appeal to Leslie. Despite his heart disease which decreased his libido to 50 percent of its former Austin Powers-like proportions, Illarmo promises he’s still up for anything (‘Half of me is still twice your man’).
By sharing his quest with the audience, Illarmo, who is currently healthy, is a living, droll example of how tragedy can be turned into art. The laughter induced by the show offers empathetic consolation to the sick and fearful.
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