By William Wolf

WHAT I DID LAST SUMMER  Send This Review to a Friend

Clever staging can make all the difference. Director Jim Simpson’s mounting of the Signature Theatre’s revival of A. R. Gurney’s “What I Did Last Summer” gives the 1983 play visual cachet and manages to bring us closer to the characters. At the outset typed stage directions are projected on a wide, white wall, thereby bringing us swiftly into the mentality of the playwright. At the side of the stage, drummer Dan Weiner begins a rhythmic beat that is kept up throughout, with occasional use of the drums for sound effects. The look and sounds of the production are refreshing.

One can assume that Gurney has resurrected at least some personal memories to enliven his characters, who are depicted in the war-time summer of 1945 on the Canadian side of Lake Erie, where the Higgins family resides in a vacation home. The plot combines coming of age with adult angst to entertaining effect. This is not an extremely deep play, but there is enough of a ring of truth to its characters to keep one involved and appreciative of the excellent performances. Characters addressing the audience at points to proclaim their own special relevance to the drama help make them all the more human. In this production style is almost as important as substance.

Noah Galvin has a special challenge playing Charlie, 14, who is going through a host of growing pains. He is rebellious, giving his mother Grace (Carolyn McCormick) a hard time. Charlie is filled with anger and frustrations, and behaves furiously at times in an expression of worrying about what is expected of him versus what he might want if left unpressured.

Kate McGonigle portrays his older sister, Elsie, who is at an awkward age at which she questions her looks and also gives her mother a rough time, sidestepping household chores and thoroughly involved in her lack of self-assurance. Charlie and Elsie each want to be the play’s center.

Others in the growing up category include Pico Alexander as Charlie’s friend Ted, and Juliet Brett as Bonny, a cute teenager who would like to get closer to Charlie but is naïve and unsure of herself, worried about what she should and should not do in the context of the the social mores within which her life is unfolding.

For me, at least, Grace is the most interesting character, all the more so because of the sharp performance by McCormick, always an excellent actress. She sympathetically nails the character of a woman whose husband has been off fighting the war in the Pacific arena, who is lonely and who is struggling with trying to raise her son and daughter at crisis ages in their lives. She has her emotional needs, overlooked in the press of her daily obligations. She also wants the play to be about her, and a large part of it is, including a revelation about a past friendship and what she has been up to in secret.

Grace’s life is illuminated as a key thread in the play develops. The local area has its focus of shame in a character known as the pig woman, about whom sexual rumors have spread. She is Anna Trumbull, partly of Native American heritage, broadly played by Kristine Nielsen. She lives in isolation on her farm, and she has nursed ideas of being an artist and teacher. When Charlie applies for a job as a handyman with her as part of his rebellious attitude, she becomes taken with him, sees real or imagined artistic potential, and begins to dominate his life in an aspect of the play that is quite strained, but enlived by Nielsen’s flamboyant acting.

There is a showdown when Grace visits Anna to get her to release her hold on Charlie, and we learn about a past acquaintanceship between Grace and Anna and a secret Grace did not realize Anna knew. The plotting gets heavy, but ultimately the characters command and retain interest, in great measure as a result of the impressive, appealing acting. At the Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street. Phone: 212-244-7529. Reviewed May 20, 2015.

  

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