By Linda Chin
The Song of Summer – Creative Team: Lauren Yee (playwright), Taibi Magar (director), Adam Rigg (set design), Valérie Thérèse Bart (costume design), Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew (lighting design), and Mikaal Sulaiman (sound design). Original song by Max Vernon and Helen Park.
Much like those songs from the summers of our adolescence and young adulthood, Lauren Yee’s new play, The Song of Summer will most definitely touch your heart, stick in your head, and trigger memories of times good, bad, and in-between. Robbie Retton is a young self-made pop star who is living a life others dream of – with a hit song, manager, LA lifestyle, girls lining up to see him – a long way from his high school persona as an awkward nerd with an unstable home life. After an absence of about 12 years, he shows up unexpectedly at his old piano teacher Mrs. C.’s house in Pottsville PA, a one-hospital, one-movie theater, and one-new-Thai-restaurant town. Robbie was one of Mrs. C’s prized students and one of her daughter Tina’s good friends. In contrast to Robbie, Tina was the cool, adventurous, sexually experienced teen with the ambition and smarts to escape from the stifling town and be a doctor. We come to learn that Mrs. C is pretty cool herself, an ex-hippie, single mother who adopted Tina from China and with her wise and kind maternal touch “adopted” Robbie as well. Mrs. C. is also welcoming of Robbie’s manager Joe, who shows up in town to bring his runaway client back to his senses, and back to the tour route.
In presenting the world premiere of Lauren Yee’s The Song of Summer, Trinity Rep demonstrates its leadership in reinventing the American theater canon. Support from the Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust has allowed the theater to commission playwrights to write plays specifically with, and for, its resident acting company. In selecting Yee, Artistic Director Curt Columbus chose not only one of the most popular up-and-coming playwrights of the past decade (Cambodian Rock Band, King of the Yees, The Great Leap Forward), but a playwright who is shaping the future of American theater. According to Columbus’ program notes: “The Song of Summer…is a roundabout romance that will pull at folks’ heart strings, while it also challenges how we think about fame, fortune, and the true meaning of success. I know our audiences are going to fall in love with her one-of-a-kind playwriting.”
Seeing a small cast with so much talent representing intergenerational, gender, ethnic diversity on stage, and with each of the four actors having such meaty roles, admittedly made me both bubble over with enthusiasm and swell up with tears. Seeing new(er) playwrights have their work produced on professional stages is a gift. It is also thrilling that young storytellers like Quiara Hudes (Miss You Like Hell), Celeste Song (Endlings), Sara Porkolob (Dragon Lady and Dragon Mama) include wonderful, multidimensional characterizations of older adults in their work. In The Song of Summer, Yee brings voice to Mrs. C’s and Joe’s own lost dreams and sacrifice (Mrs. C played in piano competitions and Joe was a former performer with The Four Tops) – and Scurria and Wilson, Jr. share their infinite warmth and wisdom with the audience beautifully.
Thankfully The Song of Summer is not a one-time hit for Trinity Rep, but evidence of a longer-term, intentional commitment to diversity, inclusion, access and representation. Beginning in the 2018-19 academic year, all returning and future students in the Brown University / Trinity Rep master of fine arts (MFA) programs in acting and directing will have the full cost of tuition covered. They are literally creating the change they want to see in the world.
To Lauren Yee and Trinity Rep – these songs are for you: (Everything You Do) I Believe in You and Reach Out (I’ll Be There) by The Four Tops.
The Song of Summer runs March 14 – April 14. Tickets start at $25. More information can be found at www.trinityrep.com/summer
