Do you ever feel melancholy? It’s like sadness, but not exactly. It’s the feeling you get when you look out the window in the afternoon or when you see raindrops on a flower in the springtime.

All Student Theatre’s (AST) production of “Melancholy Play,” which ran from Thursday, April 11 to Sunday, April 14, explored that feeling. In an exaggerated style that ranged from comedic to impactful, sometimes in such short succession that I got emotional whiplash, “Melancholy Play” showcased the beauty and necessity of sadness.

The play follows Tilly (sophomore Emma Flannery), a bank teller whose sadness is so beautiful anyone who speaks to her falls in love. That love inspires them to share their pain with her. The concept of therapy is strangely inverted in the play as Tilly’s therapist, Lorenzo the Unfeeling (freshman Emma Thorp), falls in love with her and tells her about his childhood abandonment at a candy shop in “an unspecified European country.” Frank (senior Nathan Wetter) and Frances (junior Sarah James), who meet Tilly while hemming her pants and cutting her hair, respectively, share monologues about their lives and sadness, speaking over each other as their confessions create a single story. They too share a love for her. Tilly’s circle of admirers is complete when Frances’ wife Joan (senior Jessy Martinez) falls in love with her while the three of them are having tea.

Grace Bruton | Student Life

Actors perform a song in All Student Theatre’s production of “Melancholy Play” on the Beaumont Stage in Brookings Quadrangle. “Melancholy Play” ran from Thursday to Sunday night.

None of them truly love Tilly—they love how beautiful her melancholy is, and, to paraphrase Frank, how she looks as she cries over life’s impermanence. Thus, when she finally becomes happy, those who loved her become melancholy themselves. Eventually, their melancholy becomes so concentrated that it turns them into almonds.

Now, if you think that summary sounds a little ridiculous, you’d be right. So is nearly every line of Tilly’s dialogue and seeing Joan cry over a three-inch-long almond prop.

The over-the-top acting was probably the only way to hit the genuinely emotional beats behind the humor, but sometimes the humor and emotion didn’t connect. It’s hard to truly feel sorry for Lorenzo when you’re too busy laughing at the holes in his story (he is not from a country, simply from Europe) and his obviously fake accent. Some of Tilly’s monologues that would make other characters fall for her were so out there that they just gave me secondhand embarrassment despite Flannery’s emotional delivery. That, combined with a personal dislike for instant love, made some of the characters’ relationships fall flat in my opinion.

“Melancholy Play” set its sights high, and, for the most part, it reached its goals. Despite my issues with other parts of the play, each individual performance was genuinely successful and emotional. James’ performance truly embodied the listless melancholy Frances felt after seemingly losing Tilly, and her chemistry with Martinez perfectly showed Frances and Joan’s troubled but loving marriage. Flannery allowed just enough of Tilly’s fear of her manic happiness to show for the audience to be scared with her—how was her happiness legitimate if it refused to leave even on truly sad occasions? Despite Lorenzo’s general ridiculousness, Thorp made sure that the character’s pain showed every time she was on stage.

AST’s decision to stage the play outdoors on the Beaumont Stage, while encountering some issues with the weather—I attended the Thursday performance, which was pushed back over an hour as the audience hid in Cupples I from a thunderstorm—worked perfectly with the show’s general idea. There truly is no better way to stage the concept of melancholy than outside on a drizzly spring night that’s just a little too cold to be comfortable. Tilly and Frances especially love to stare out the window as the world passes by, and with the audience’s seats on the rear of the stage, looking out over the set and Brookings Quad, we did just that.

Ultimately, “Melancholy Play” reminded us as much as the rainy night did that we shouldn’t run from melancholy, and that happiness doesn’t mean much without sadness.