Arts & Events

A middle-aged writer (Brett Mermer) introduces himself to tell us what he did last summer: he wrote a play about what he, as a 14 year old, did one summer years before,July, 1945, in fact, a war year—a summer that changed his life. This is the slender framing device for A. R. Gurney's coming of age play, which demonstrates both charm and pith in this production by Piedmont-Oakland Repertory Theatre (PORT). 

But first director John McMullen chooses an excellent alternative to what's become by now an old cliché, playing recorded music of a not-so-long bygone era before a show and during the intermission. Instead, Elizabeth Jane introduces and sings well several songs from the times, songs that figure in the play, though there just as a line quoted, a verse thrown back and forth: "Straighten Up & Fly Right," "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" and so on. A nice touch. 

The cast—Cameron Dodd, Nathan Zabala, Melanie Marshall, Alison Whismore, Rosie Fry and Susannah Wood—make a neat ensemble for the often quick scenes with sharp dialogue and a few direct expositions to the audience by characters, about Charlie and his mother and sister—his father's fighting in the South Pacific—and their somewhat dyspeptic stay at "the lake" near the Northeast US-Canada border, and Charlie's experience with "the Pig Woman," a local character, an independent art teacher with a place down by the lakeshore, a nay-sayer to all that's bright & shiny & "progressive." Susannah Wood's performance is a high point, a character like a radicalized Auntie Mame—if that's not too much an oxymoron!—or like Anna Lee's hardboiled Bohemian artist character Mac in sam Fuller's 1959 film 'The Crimson Kimono'—and there's an old connection between her and Charlie's mother; the scene where that comes out is maybe the real center of the story ... 

It's a fine Fall entertainment—and hopefully PORT has a long run of its own on Piedmont Avenue. 

Saturdays at 8, Sundays at 2:30 & 7, 4137 Piedmont Avenue—across from Barney's—Oakland. $22 advance, $25 at the door. www.PORT4137.info