SAME TIME NEXT YEAR
SAME TIME NEXT YEAR
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.
While the San Francisco Playhouse is no stranger to award winning plays, recently it played host to the Gerry Mogg Production Company and its flawless reprise of Bernard Slade's SAME TIME NEXT YEAR.
Regardless of whether it was the size of the house—under 100 seats—or the superb acting, director Gerry Mogg achieved a sense of emotional and physical intimacy between actors and audience that nearly departed the domain of vicarious experience or a suspension of disbelief and crossed the threshold into voyeurism.
Then too, the erotic charge could have been partly due to the dancers: Amanda Cambria and Jennifer Winter: they punctuated each of the scene changes with titillating choreography that would rival any of the sizzle shows in North Beach.
There is no doubt that upon departing the theater, some faction of the audience reconvened at the Hungry i, or Big Al's on Broadway.
Anyone who has scene the film version with Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda knows that the play spans nearly twenty-five years: the characters who commence the play in 1951 are not the characters who finish the play in 1975.
Nor does their relationship ever cease its transmutations: it advances from what could have been a perfect one-night-stand to a bond—though elicit—more enduring and compassionate, than many marriages.
The play requires subtlety and nuance: each time that Amanda and Jennifer clear the stage and the Klieg lights refocus on George and Doris, the director has to reestablish the characters who are continually ratcheted through time and emotional space and are experientially reforged.
While the make-up artist is aging the cast, MR Mogg is maturing the characters and their relationship.
MR Mogg performs alchemy on George and Doris: refining out their dross and sintering their precious metals.
Then too, perhaps by suggesting alchemy there is an underestimation of the process that MR Mogg describes as love: i.e. love unfettered by "circumstances or societal standards."
Great casting has breathed new life into this classic which first hit a London stage in 1976.
Jennifer Winter, as Doris, takes on a strong female lead, nearly propping up the immature, guilt-ridden and insecure George, played by Irakli Tabidze.
Watching the show, one is likely to catch a whiff of the morality, or moral lassitude, that defined the late sixties and early seventies.
If you enjoy comedy with poignancy this is your ticket.
Coincidentally, Gerry Mogg lives in Alameda, hopefully he will bring his work home with him.
Who's never won? Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music.