Theater Reviews : Too Many Changes Spoil Slade’s ‘Same Time, Next Year’

COSTA MESA —  “Same Time, Next Year” was the first play Bernard Slade wrote after making his name and fortune creating the television hit “Happy Days” and others.

His switch to live theater has provided some very viable stage sitcoms that often go beyond that genre in tone and intent.

In this production of “Same Time,” at the Theatre District, director Mario Lescot takes a level-headed and amused look at Slade’s episodic comic chronicle about Doris (Karen Mangano) and George (David Rousseve), a couple who found each other for a one-night stand and kept it going for a quarter-century. Their problem is that both are married to someone else. Each year, while Doris is supposedly on a retreat, and George is doing the accounts for an old friend, they spend a deliriously happy weekend together at a country inn in Northern California.

The success of any production is the ability of the two actors, beyond a comic sensibility, to accomplish the interior aging of the couple and to fathom the subtext Slade has provided. Mangano and Rousseve ride the fun and the years easily and have a definite charm that overrides the couple’s progress through not only their assignations but the continuing history of their own families as time goes by. They’re funny and warm and true.

But the staging is so overproduced as to minimize their efforts.

The country inn cottage looks more like a Chicago bordello room, with great swags of material everywhere, not posh, but very ripe. Lescot has also seen fit to insert interminable slide shows between the six scenes, illustrating current events in each era. They’re boring and old hat and destroy the dramatic and comic through-line Slade so artfully set up.

Even worse, Lescot has had the effrontery to rewrite Slade’s play. The inn’s proprietor, Mr. Chalmers, never appears on stage, that is until this production, where he minces in and out with a feather duster and passes the time of day.

Worse yet, Lescot has added two chambermaids who make up the bed, moon about and discuss their own affairs before each scene. Slade did not write any of this drivel, and the actors involved would be better utilized off-stage, helping with the quick changes necessary to keep Slade’s tempos where they should be.

And if the slides and Lescot’s “improvements” are not bad enough themselves, they add almost an hour to what is really a rather short play.

* “Same Time, Next Year,” Theatre District, 1599 Superior Ave., Suite B-2, Costa Mesa. Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 16. $12. (714) 548-7671. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes. Karen Mangano: Doris

David Rousseve: George

A Theatre District production of Bernard Slade’s comedy, produced by Bonnie Vise. Directed by Mario Lescot. Co-directed by Joan Lescot. Stage manager: Sharon Evans.