Time's Toll

By T.E.K.

SUMMER by Hugh Leonard

As a dramatist, Ireland's Hugh Leonard tracks the minute hand of life. As the clock ticks, his characters fill the passing hour with the tang of Irish talk and freshets of Irish humor, with the surge of sex and the ache of love, with religious piety and tipsy poetry. Leonard's people feel the sting of remorse, offer the balm of compassion, and embrace the abiding little ironies of the condition called human.

Death, of course, is life's largest irony. Mortality tolled through Leonard's best-known play, "Da "; in Summer it rustles through the sunlit grass on a verdant hilltop near Dublin. The year is 1968, and three middle-aged couples rendezvous for a picnic. Food, wine, gossip and nostalgic reminiscences mask tiny tremors of apprehension and isolation.

Ruddy-hued Stormy Loftus (Thomas A. Carlin) is a bustling contractor flush with building schemes. His wife Jan (Charlotte Moore) is an alabaster-pale monument to worthy causes. Stormy's best friend, Jess White (James Greene), sells wallpaper, but his wallet is bare thanks to six children, whom his wife Myra (Pauline Flanagan) counts as the blessed bounty of God. Ruggedly handsome Richard Halvey (David Canary), whose wife Trina (Swoosie Kurtz) dresses and acts half her age, has a gnawing lust in his loins for Jan Loftus.

Act II, six years later, scars the picnic ground with revelations. In their vulnerability, the characters elicit the playgoer's binding affection. The artful cast is gently persuasive, and Director Brian Murray displays an unerring hand at stirring the evening's fun and folly. -- T.E.K.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.