‘Summer, 1976’ Review: Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht Give Stellar Performances in an Affecting Broadway Two-Hander on Friendship
variety.comFrank Rizzo Friends come and go. Some stay throughout our lives while others, however significant for a time, fade into the haze of memory yet always linger within us.
In “Summer, 1976,” the new Broadway play by David Auburn (“Proof”) about a short-yet-significant friendship, Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht — two of the most accomplished and compelling actors around — create a pair of indelible characters looking back at their brief relationship during a long-ago season. (The title tells you exactly when.) Sure to have future life on other stages, the play is an insightful and engaging two-hander that will have audiences pondering the nature of friendship, the values we place on it, and even how well we really know each other.
Auburn presents two very different women telling and then reliving the history of their evolving friendship as it grows and, eventually, fades, charting their story with humor, compassion and complexity.
The playwright crafts dual portraits of both intimacy and distance as details of these women’s lives and their relationship are revealed throughout the past and present.
Read more on variety.com