Theater patrons of a certain age will remember Herman Raucher’s slightly scandalous film from 1971, a memoir of sexual awakening and the loss of of a certain kind of innocence. On a New England summer resort island, a stripling teenager (Hermie) becomes infatuated with a young woman (Dorothy) whose new husband has just been called away to war service in the Pacific. In the end, Hermie gets what he wants, but not at all in the way that he imagined it.
Raucher’s sea-breezed bit of sentimentality transfers to the Bethesda stage, and picks up a musical score along the way. Hermie (Ryan Nealy) is appropriately gawky, and Dorothy (Nancy Snow) is bemused, but the play gets its oomph from Michael Vitaly Sazonov’s spring-loaded portrayal of Hermie’s friend Oscy, a hormone-charged adolescent with his older brother’s sex manual.
Harmonies of the period make their appearance in the unmemorable songs, which are not well served by aggressive micing of the vocalists.
- Summer of ’42, book by Hunter Foster, music and lyrics by David Kirshenbaum, based on the novel and screenplay by Herman Raucher, directed by Meredith McDonough, Round House Theatre, Bethesda, Md.