Category: Uncategorized

Los Angeles writer Laurie Newbound remembers well the sensational buzz that accompanied the Broadway premiere of her Canadian father Bernard Slade’s legendary hit comedy, Same Time, Next Year (which is currently playing to much enthusiastic applause until July 16 at the Classic Theatre Festival, 54 Beckwith Street East, Perth.) Speaking by phone from L.A., Newbound, who in 1975 was a student at Sarah Lawrence, says “it was just electric. The response at that time was incredible,” as a four-block-long lineup outside the Brooks Atkinson Theatre the day after opening night signaled the start of a three-year run on Broadway. “When I saw the musical Hamilton, it reminded me of a small handful of plays I’ve attended, like my father’s play, where it really felt like an event, where the audience was really excited to be there.” Newbound recalls her father wrote Same Time, Next Year very quickly following a weekend getaway that Slade enjoyed with his wife, Jill Foster (who was born Florence Hancock). He had been inspired by the beautiful, rustic surroundings of a cottage in Mendocino, California, and thought it was the perfect location for a romantic comedy which, in this case, is about two people (George and Doris) who gather there annually for a weekend despite being married to other people. “Doris to me is such a remembrance of my mother,” Newbound says. “That character is so like my mother. I always loved it for that.” Slade himself wrote that “There is a great deal of Jill in Doris, as there is in most of the women I write. During an intermission of a performance in Boston a woman archly asked Jill, ‘Which one are you, the mistress or the wife?’ Jill said, ‘I’m both.’” Newbound says she has not seen the play in 15 years, but that she did take her kids to see it in New Haven, and it continues to enjoy cross-generational appeal. She grew up in Hollywood, attending school with the daughters of Gregory Peck and Lloyd Bridges, among other actors, and began a career in television working as a script assistant on the program Barney Miller. She recalls Slade being unhappy during the last four or five years of writing for television, when he was cranking out scripts for everything from Bewitched (which featured Jill in the role of Darrin Stevens’ secretary, Betty) and The Flying Nun to The Partridge Family (the latter two were series he actually created as well). As many writers lamented at the time, there was only so much character and plot development that could be squeezed into 22 minutes, sandwiched among commercials for antacids and toilet tissue. “I even remember as a kid asking why television isn’t better,” she laughs, noting that most viewers are now enjoying a golden age of TV shows with great variety and depth. “The Partridge Family was adorable,” she admits, noting that Susan Dey’s character, Laurie, was named for her, and Newbound’s first boyfriend Keith earned a certain notoriety as the namesake… Continue reading

Fresh off her award-winning performance as Raina in last year’s Arms and the Man at Perth’s Classic Theatre Festival, Lana Sugarman has returned to star in the Bernard Slade comedy Same Time, Next Year, about a couple – Doris and George – who get together for an annual weekend over 25 years despite being married to other people. Sugarman’s performance, along with her co-star Scott Clarkson, has already won applause from audiences and some of the nation’s top theatre reviewers, Iris Winston and Jamie Portman of the Capital Critics Circle. Winston hailed the production  as “A delightful opener for this year’s Classic Theatre Festival.” Portman, meanwhile, enthused that “there are only two characters on stage, but thanks to the performances of Scott Clarkson and Lana Sugarman, we are conscious of other lives at play — unseen lives, yes, but ones that assume their own reality in Laurel Smith’s beautifully modulated production. These two performers take full advantage of Bernard Slade’s crackling comic dialogue. They trade the funny one-liners  with an ease indicative of the potent on-stage chemistry existing between them. But there’s also genuine tenderness in the relationship we’re seeing. “Sugarman, a delightful actress, gives us a Doris with a readiness to accept the funny side of life, but she also reveals a woman with the strength and resilience to respond to change and challenge within the emerging feminist culture of the day. Clarkson, a nimble comedian, finds an unusual depth of character in George. He also is quite astonishing in giving us a man who is gradually getting older as the evening progresses. It’s an achievement that goes beyond adding a moustache to the upper lip or pencilling a bit of grey into the sideburns.” Playing Doris has been a fun experience for Sugarman, who says it’s especially rewarding because we get to grow up with her. She is very earnest and naive at the beginning of the show. As time goes on we see her come into her own, going back to school, speaking her mind, running a successful business and raising four children. There is both sweetness and strength. I can relate to a lot of her characteristics.” Sugarman sees similarities between the work of George Bernard Shaw and Slade, because both playwrights create characters who are trying “earnestly to find their way in the world. I think both of them comment on the times – examining the cost of war, falling for people who may not be deemed ‘appropriate’, all the while maintaining a fun, light tone.” Part of the challenge and charm of Same Time, Next Year is both characters always being on stage for the length of the show. Sugarman sees a beauty in this challenge, because “you are always ‘in the world of the play,’ in a zone with no distractions. I think it can be more challenging at times for the characters who pop in and out, or enter late in the show, and have to keep the energy/continuity going.” Working with her co-star Clarkson –… Continue reading