Jim Kershner: Next year, I’d rather just stay home

The audience at Interplayers’ Sunday matinee seemed to thoroughly enjoy “Same Time, Next Year,” the 1975 Bernard Slade romantic comedy.

They laughed at the one-liners and cried at the appropriate moments.

I stipulate to that, because I intend to present a minority viewpoint. I came away convinced that the play is mostly phony and contrived. I’ve seen it a few times over the years, and it becomes increasingly hard to swallow with every viewing.

I know, I know. This play, which spawned a 1978 Alan Alda-Ellen Burstyn film, is supposed to be a sweet, ironic romantic comedy that fulfills everybody’s “what-if” fantasies.

It’s about George and Doris, both married to other people, who wind up in bed in a country inn in 1951. These strangers in the night hit it off so well they decide to meet every year, same place, same weekend. And they do so for the next 25 years, keeping the affair secret from their spouses.

This play is a staple of small theaters. But this time, I had zero patience, for two reasons.

One, the production itself is awkward. Beth Hallaren, an Equity actress with national experience, acquits herself well as Doris, but Cameron Lewis portrays George as a little too mopey and doleful.

Two, I can no longer pretend that Slade’s essential premise is even remotely honest.

The kicker arrived when George makes a reference, without a trace of irony, to “everything we’ve been through together.”

Are you kidding me? George and Doris have been through nothing together. They see each other one night a year.

Their poor spouses – those are the people with whom they’ve shared everything: child-rearing, illnesses and even the loss of a child. Yet Slade doesn’t even allow us to meet them.

Doris and George speak mostly lovingly about their spouses, yet far from absolving them, this merely makes them seem even more dishonest and shallow. Why, exactly, are they carrying on a 25-year affair?

This premise simply doesn’t pass the credibility test. It doesn’t help that this production, directed by Esta Rosevear, has some awkward directorial touches.

Between scenes, a projector flashes photos which establish the era of the next scene. For 1956 we might see Ike and Elvis. That’s fine, but then, with no segue, we see an amateurishly made video clip which shows, for instance, a hand hesitantly reaching for a hospital door, or a hand making a list on a piece of paper.

What? Is this supposed to be foreshadowing? If so, it’s clumsy and ineffective.

To give Hallaren and Lewis credit, the comic banter and comic business work much of the time. Hallaren proves to be especially adaptable and flexible, forced as she is to play everything from a ditzy young mom to a middle-aged flower child (?!) to a successful, mature businesswoman.

Lewis, on the other hand, wears the same earnest and dolorous expression on his face throughout. It was hard to see why Doris would be so smitten with this particular George.

I will admit to a possible bias here. I attended this production of “Same Time, Next Year” the day before my 30th wedding anniversary. Nothing like that to make the Doris-and-George version of love seem especially shallow.