BY KAREN BOSSICK

Wood River High School has just the thing for the Dog Days of Summer—“Almost Maine.”

The sentimental comedy is designed to interject a dose of coolness in the heat of summer, while raising funds for the WRHS Performing Arts Academy’s 2018-19 musical this coming winter.

The WRHS will present the play at 7 tonight and Saturday, Aug. 11, at the WRHS Performing Arts Theater. They will also present a 1 p.m. matinee on Saturday.

Tickets are just $5, available at the door.

The sweet, poignant show contains a series of very human, very universal vignettes about love set in almost Maine, a place that’s so far north it’s almost not in the United States. On a cold, clear winter nights as the northern lights hover in the star-filled sky, some of its residents find themselves falling in and out of love in unexpected, sometimes hilarious ways.

John Cariani’s play is a theater darling and Tony nominee that has become one of the most produced works in the country since it made its debut Off Broadway in 2006.

The New York Post referred to the play as “Thornton Wilder crossed with the Twilight Zone.”

The vignettes encompass a local bar where you drink for free if you’re sad. A repairman who promises to mend a shattered heart contained in a sandwich bag. A character who walks around the earth in the name of love. And two people who have no preconceived notions about love only to fall--splat!—head over heels in love.

The young actors who will take part are the crème de la crème of the school’s theater program through the years, said Cathy Reinheimer, one of the directors.

They include Alaylia Norton, Sean Sheehan, Sarah Feltman, Joseph Zeising, Madeline Biggers, Jessica Timmons, Juliette Rollins, Koii Lauritsen and William Pullin.

Directors and crew are Taylor Telford, Cathy Reinheimer, Karl Nordstrom, Christine Leslie, Hilary Biggers, Julie Fox, Hadley Cabitto and Hilarie Neely.

Company of Fools staged “Almost Maine” in 2016. And the WRHS Performing Arts Academy first performed it about six years ago in a class project.

“Not only are the students excited to do the show but three Performing Arts Academy teachers, the WRMS drama teacher, an educator, a current student and a former student were all on board to direction the various scenes,” said Karl Nordstrom, who heads up the Academy.