Growing apart, even among the most brief of friendships, makes us lovesick for the memories of what once was, and calls us to mourn the potential of what could have been.
Through the two-woman retrospective “Summer, 1976” we see a friendship blossom, thrive, struggle, and eventually fade, not from any spectacular conflict, but ultimately from something more ephemeral than that. Chalk it up to miscommunication, misaligned expectations, or even just the wrong place and at the wrong time. Whatever the reason, or the lack thereof, David Auburn’s 90-minute one act struck me as confronting the loss of a friend through a realistic lens, complete with the ambiguity, regret, and awkwardness that comes from the fleeting but beautiful connections we rarely experience in the course of our lives.
When walking into the Samuel J. Friedman Theater at Sunday’s matinee performance, I wasn’t sure what to expect due to intentionally not spoiling any plot details for myself. Though the theater was filled with the sound of 70s boogie music, I noticed that the layout of the stage itself did not agree with this: the set is a simple 3-wall room lined with a midcentury style and only accompanied by a dining table and two chairs. This simplicity didn’t jive with my expectation for a play whose name evoked a torrid season on the heels of the counterculture movement. However, as someone whose roots in theatre tie back to playing Hal in Auburn’s Pulitzer-winning “Proof,” I was drawn in nonetheless.
Told through a reappraisal of the friendship between Diana (Laura Linney) and Alice (Jessica Hecht) by the characters themselves, the play assesses the individual moments of their time together in the suburbs of Cleveland. This happens not only through the progression of their summer together, but also the impressions they have of each other both at the time and in retrospect. The piece relies on, and finds its humanity through, the vivid expressions and personable storytelling modes of Hecht and Linney to paint pictures of these vignettes in the audiences’ minds. It is easy to imagine this play falling apart with anyone besides these magnetic souls.
Ultimately, the show is about the ebb and flow of friendships, found and lost and found again, though never the same as they once were. In reflecting on the piece in the following days after the performance, both in isolation and in conversation with others, it struck me just how many people related to the experience of finding a connection offhandedly, developing what seemed like a lifelong bond, and finding that that link slipped away just as quickly as it had been forged.
Therein lies the heart of “Summer.” Its humanity can be recognized by any theatregoer, yet still roots itself in novel ground by touching upon a piece of the human experience rarely plumbed. In one of Linney’s closing lines, she addresses a dilemma we often wrestle with in this arena: whether we miss the person themselves, or whether we just miss the memories of this person. Whichever the answer, those looking to revel in a nostalgic daydream can come to this play and find themselves swept back to the summer of 1976, and maybe find the answer for themselves.
Summer, 1976 runs through June 10 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater in Manhattan. Information can be found at manhattantheatreclub.com. Running time is 1 hour and 30 minutes.
