Summer, 1976b by David Auburn

Ah, the, at this point, tried and true tandem storytelling play. Two characters have token interactions with each other, but mostly just tell a story from their differing perspectives. It’s fundamentally like a one-person show, but with a second actor onstage to assuage that knee-jerk audience resistance to the idea of a solo performance. Admittedly, there is something inherently suspenseful in the format. Because you are getting two different perspectives, you assume that something dramatic is going to happen, something worthy of a he-said/she-said telling (or, in this case, she-said/she-said). And you start off with the little amusing differences in thinking, “I showed her that I wasn’t as uptight as she thought when I welcomed the joint she passed me.” “She totally bogarted my joint, when I only offered it to be polite when I couldn’t stand to be sober in her presence for a moment longer.” Hahaha. 

The twist here, however, is that nothing really happens. There are a few fantasy moments, moments of dread of the possible, the dissolution of a marriage (almost as a side note), but nothing really dramatic happens. There is a certain relief to not having everyone’s story turn out to be big and exciting (I was prepared to do the reader version of walking out on the play when one character tells of a future in which both she and the other woman run off and each find creative success, one as an artist and the other as a writer). But, while I was not rooting for the magically happy ending, I also wasn’t satisfied with the lack of anything big happening. True, most of our lives are filled with this level of mundanity—relationships that pass quickly, leaving little impact—but I’m not sure that I need to see that reflected in the theater.