“Summer 1976” at GableStage

By Michelle F. Solomon

In the summer of 1976, Jimmy Carter is nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention in New York and Gerald Ford edges out Ronald Reagan to win the Republican Party presidential nomination, Bruce Jenner wins the gold medal at the Summer Olympics, and on July 4, the United States celebrates its bicentennial.

In David Auburn’s play, “Summer, 1976,” none of this nor any other news of the day is mentioned, not at great length anyway. It’s more personal than that — a slice of life about two women who meet when their young daughters become fast friends at a playdate.

As we get immersed in the daily lives of Diana and Alice in Columbus, Ohio, in the summer of 1976, we realize that we all have a memory of one person or perhaps a few whose fleeting time in our lives had a lasting impact. “Summer, 1976” is a play about those kinds of relationships.

In GableStage director Bari Newport’s program notes, there’s a photo of the director with a friend and a caption that reads, in part, “we lived across from each other in Columbus, Ohio, from 1978-1982.” The photo of them is “years later as adults.” (The playwright is also originally from Columbus.)

 “Friendship can be as fleeting as a summer thunderstorm,” writes Newport, “quick to appear, electric in its intensity, and gone before we realize its impact.”

It’s a good summation of the 90-minute two-hander.

Sara Morsey, who was so incredibly good as author Joan Didion in the one-person show “The Year of Magical Thinking” at GableStage in 2022, plays Diana. Veteran actress in South Florida productions, Patti Gardner – who was so superb in Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance” at Island City Stage in Fort Lauderdale this past January – plays Alice.

While playwrights usually describe a bit of background along with their characters’ ages in the script, Auburn doesn’t use the typical standard. His characters describe themselves and each other to the audience in different monologues. Only at times do they have dialogue.

Diana is the first to introduce herself and what’s happening in the moment. She talks about her disdain for Alice’s child Holly, whose “nose was always running, her mother constantly calling her over and wiping it for her whenever she came over to play with my daughter, Gretchen.” We also learn she is an artist as the children asked to play in her studio. She sternly recalls that she said it is off limits. “NO, I’d say very firmly . . this is where I work, it is not a place for play.”

Throughout Diana’s introduction, a soundtrack plays – the recognizable rhythmic hand-clapping beat of the theme from the 1976 movie “Car Wash.” Gardner as Alice is upstage bathed in a single muted light coming from overhead (Tony Galaska’s lighting throughout is pure perfection). She’s dancing and doing The Hand Roll, a disco dance move popular in the mid-1970s – a rolling motion of the hands, fist over fist.

Then it’s Alice’s turn in the spotlight to make her introduction.

“My husband taught at Ohio State and we had a nice little house. . .we’d been in Columbus three years and there were a bunch of young faculty parents with small budgets.” Also early on, she reveals that Doug, an economist, had created coupons for a babysitting co-op.

In the pair’s introductions, both cast each other off. Alice judges Diana’s need for order, an art professor who presents an air of condescension – “this meticulous, very controlled person” – while Diana deems Alice, a faculty wife, a “self-proclaimed ‘free spirit,’  a sleepy-eyed little hippie.”

As time progresses, these unlikely friends sun in the backyard while their kids play, smoke pot together, take a trip to a secondhand store to get Alice furniture. Diana tells the audience about her horror one day entering Alice’s house with its “makeshift college apartment furniture” and art exhibition posters “in no frames just tacked directly to the wall.”

This is a memory play so the women are older; they are now in their 50s recounting to the audience, and to each other, moments from the summer of 1976. 

Her gray hair tied back in a ponytail and wearing costume designer Brooke Vacca’s idea of how Diana would dress – cropped blue pants, deck shoes, and buttoned-down blue shirt with a scarf tied around her neck –  Morsey has a punchy meter in her delivery. She sometimes slowly delivers each word as if focusing on the flavors and textures of Auburn’s words like one would sip wine.

Gardner, in Vacca’s choice of a long, drapey, casual orange dress, at times a jean jacket and macrame purse slung on her shoulder, ensures her Alice is breezy but Auburn has given this character plenty of profound moments, too. Gardner mines the richness of the character – she’s smarter and wiser than she is first made out to be, inhabiting the poignant and sometimes dramatic moments.

In the script, Auburn offers a blank canvas – no instructions for set decoration. Newport and her production crew have taken this blank canvas and created a spectacular world for the two characters. It may be easy to miss while squarely focused on the action but don’t  –  take it in.

Scenic designer Frank J Oliva’s playing area for the two characters is made up of about two dozen staggered, black pedestal-like cubes attached at slightly different heights. Not only is Auburn’s script intense for the two actors with its monologues and character arcs, but they must navigate these many different playing levels. 

Morsey and Gardner are pros and Newport’s direction puts the actors at various places on the levels – sometimes making them equal, other times one on a higher level when they are more prominent or dominant. The whole area is utilized. At one point, there is even the enactment of a car that the two are sitting in.

A large scrim covers the back wall and both wings. When front lit, it mimics the layout of the cubic playing space in different colors. Projection designs by Jamie Godwin also use the scrim to create a sense of place (one colorfully beautiful projection depicts San Francisco).

When light comes through, different areas are revealed that create the atmosphere loaded with so many props tucked in different “rooms” (kudos to Newport –  assisted by  Marialexia Hernandez). One area behind the scrim, represents Diana’s house. Pieces of artwork, a family picture, and lamps. Another is a precisely assembled backyard with two canvas chairs, pillows on them perfectly placed. 

Then there’s Alice’s home, three separate areas  – refrigerator in the kitchen, living room, and backyard where a retro metal green lawn chair and a Bauhaus table that is referenced in the play dangle from the top. Different decorative lights hang in different areas, too.

Sound design by Sean McGinley and audio engineering by Hector Martinez are another production achievement. The soundtrack of familiar songs – a riff of Heart’s “Magic Man” comes in and out at various times, Hall and Oates and Elton John. When the women are in a car, the audio is piped through to sound like a car radio, when they are sitting in the backyard, the music is engineered so it has the tone of a radio playing outdoors.

There are laughs and tears in this play about friendship and bonding, and a big dose of “remember when” for the audience – what life was like almost 50 years ago before friends were found and made on social media and there was a different style of communication –a call on a landline telephone, a stop by someone’s house if you couldn’t get in touch with them. It was human connection on a different plane. 

Gablestage’s “Summer, 1976” is a wonderful way to escape the divisive and 24-hour news cycle of Spring, 2025. And along with that, GableStage’s production makes you want to never leave the college town neighborhood inhabited by two very interesting women.

WHAT: “Summer, 1976″ by David Auburn
WHERE: GableStage in the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables 
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. 2 p.m. Wednesday and Sunday. Through Sunday, April 20 
COST: $50 and $60 includes $10 service fee (discounts for students, teachers, artists, military and groups). 
INFORMATION: 305-445-1119 or gablestage.org

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