Summer, 1976
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, New York City ★★★★
“There is something so soothing about spending an afternoon on a screened-in porch with two fabulous actresses,” said Johnny Oleksinki in the New York Post. That’s the principal pleasure of the new Broadway drama from Proof playwright David Auburn. Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht co-star as two quietly frustrated women who are reminiscing about the summer when they forged an unlikely friendship while watching their 5-year-old daughters. Linney’s Diana, in 1976, was single and a judgmental art professor while Hecht’s Alice was a joint-smoking free spirit in a conventional marriage. But as the stars trade monologues, we see how each contains multitudes, and how the pair shared secrets and helped each other through trauma.
“The scale of Summer, 1976 makes it easy to dismiss,” said Jackson McHenry in NYMag.com. But it’s refreshing to just sit
with these characters and get to know what matters to them. Linney is “predictably good” as a type A woman who’s fraying, while Hecht, who has been nominated for a Tony, gets the role that eventually proves to be richer. Her Alice, you realize, is “placidly easy-breezy as a defense mechanism,” because marriage and motherhood have left her feeling stalled. Auburn also shows a keen feel for how minor matters can chill a significant friendship for years without permanently killing it, said Charles Isherwood in The Wall Street Journal. Daniel Sullivan directs with his “customary sensitivity,” and as modest as this quiet two-hander may seem, “the closer you look, and listen, and the more you reflect upon it, the deeper grow its rewards.”