Anxiety Looms On "A Summer Day"

Karen Allen, surrounded by memories, in "A Summer Day" at the Cherry Lane. Photo © Sandra Coudert

Angst, Scandanavian-style, made popular by Ingmar Bergman in our youth, and gently mocked by Woody Allen, is back in Jon Fosse's "A Summer Day."

"A Summer Day," at the Cherry Lane Theatre, through November 25th, is getting its first-time premiere  in New York City in this affectionate production by  Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. 

"A Summer Day,"  takes anxiety and sadness to the brink. By an informal count, the words "anxious" and "sad" were celebrated more than a dozen times in the text of Jon Fosse's play in director Sarah Cameron Sunde's translation. 

Melancholia,  bolstered by boredom, looks to be a Norwegian pasttime, seconded only by going out onto rough waters.

Samantha Soule with McCaleb Burnett in "A Summer Day." Photo © Sandra Coudert. 

Asle (McCaleb Burnett) likes it out there in his little boat. His wife (Karen Allen as Older Woman, and Samantha Soule as Younger Woman) finds it scary. As the play opens, the Older Woman stands at the window looking out at the pier. Her Older Friend (Pamela Shaw), visiting on this bright summer day, much as she had  on a much gloomier day years ago (Younger Friend, played by Maren Bush) when Asle went off to the water's edge. Never to return.

Abandoned in her lovely house, the Older Woman lives a desolate life reminiscing about that day and watching the bay.

Much of the tension in "A Summer Day" comes from waiting for the other shoe to drop. It never does. As Karen Allen's character narrates the story, we bait our breath for something unexpected to happen.

A long, somewhat tedious, yet oddly engrossing tone-poem of mourning and loss, "A Summer Day" is lovingly executed. 

For more information about "A Summer Day," and a schedule of performance, please visit www.rattlestick.org.