Theatre in Review: A Summer Day (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre/Cherry Lane Theatre)A couple of minutes into A Summer Day, Karen Allen looks at us and, employing the blank-verse form that the author, Jon Fosse, seems to prefer, says: "And this is where we lived/He and I/We lived here together." (Short pause.) "We lived here/Together/We bought this house/And we moved out of the city/And then we lived here/He and I/Just the two of us." (She smiles.) "And the house is just how it was at that time/I left it that way/Almost everything is just how it was." A little while later, Allen, playing a character named Older Woman, says, "And we both agreed/That it was a nice house/Nice and big/Nice and white." Then Samantha Soule, as The Young Woman, the more youthful version of Allen's character, enters with her lover, Asle, and says, "But at least we've got a nice house/Right/And it's right/On the water/Right." Asle responds, "Yes, it's very nice here/We've been lucky/It's not easy/To find such a nice house/And we tried for quite a while/Before we finally found one." "Yeah," the Young Woman agrees, "We took our time." Asle, not to be outdone, adds, "And in the end we found a nice house." I may be going out on a limb here, but it seems to me that a play written for adults should boast a vocabulary larger than that of a Little Golden Book. Repetition appears to be the modus operandi of the playwright, Fosse, who clearly believes if something is worth saying, it is worth saying five times in a row with minimal alterations. ("I tried to understand what it could be, but I couldn't understand what it could be.") Fosse is Norwegian, but you can't blame his translator, Sarah Cameron Sunde, for the paucity of verbal invention since, according to the program, he considers her "his American voice." So clearly he means it when, for example, Allen says, "And I could hear the waves/Hear the waves crash/The waves crashed and crashed/And I stood there/Listening to the waves crash and crash/And I felt the waves/Crash through this rain and darkness/Which now was me." Really, the man needs a thesaurus. He could also use a few details. Aside from Asle, none of the characters has a name. They also lack identifiable occupations, intellectual interests, political affiliations, ethnicities, and backstories. (Asle, we are told, was raised by his grandparents.) Don't ask me when and where A Summer Day takes place, because no one ever says. The characters talk at great length, but they convey almost nothing in the way of information. Fosse apparently wants to tease out the darker and/or more transcendent emotions underlying everyday speech, but the sheer dullness of his words smothers any hidden meanings or Pinterian subtext. (Pinter's characters talk in a terse, almost epigrammatic style that speaks volumes; each word is freighted with significance, however elusive.) As Allen's character recalls the day, years earlier, when Asle disappeared in a boating accident, Soule and the rest of the cast are made to take part in a series of numbingly circular conversations that largely recall the old acting exercise in which two people, looking at each other, repeat the same phrases over and over. I suppose it is just barely possible that a supremely gifted company might tease out deeper meanings from these monumentally banal exchanges, but, aside from Allen, who manages to maintain an eerie air of self-possession throughout, the cast flails desperately. Sunde, who also directed, says in the program notes that the play is open to many interpretations; her actors struggle to come up with a single plausible approach. The absence of detail extends to the design. John McDermott's set, a deck of weather-beaten wood surrounded on three sides by more of the same material (splashed with white paint in its upper regions), is, on its own terms, an interesting piece of work. (It's reminiscent of an abandoned boathouse, a not-inappropriate choice given the subject matter.) But when a visitor eyes this carefully wrought hovel with envy and says, "The two of you are really lucky to have found a place like this," she sounds simpleminded. In any case, Nicole Pearce's lighting -- with its subtle color changes and increasingly ominous looks -- is well done. Leah Gelpe designed a stunning projection sequence in which the entire stage is subsumed by waves. In addition, Gelpe also created the sound design, which, aside from a handful of cues that unfortunately sounded like a smartphone ringing in the house, is perfectly okay, as are Deb O's costumes. But if A Summer Day is anything more than a static, pseudo-poetic talkfest, you can't prove it by me. Fosse notes in his program biography that he is "widely considered one of the world's greatest contemporary playwrights." One thing is certain: He's a man of few words -- used repeatedly.--David Barbour 
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