BU Alum Tells his Tales of a Broken Heart, Literally
By Matuya Brand
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.
