Summer at the Lake was first performed under the title Escape by the Shakespeare Theatre on April 22, 2004 at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. It was directed by Michael Kahn; the set design was by Andrew Jackness; the costume design was by Catherine Zuber; the lighting design was by Howell Binkley; the sound design was by Martin Desjardins; and original music was composed by Adam Wernick. The cast, in order of appearance, was as follows:
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DONALD FENWAY, a boy of about seventeen |
Cameron Folmar |
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MRS. FENWAY, a fretful middle-aged woman |
Joan van Ark |
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ANNA, an elderly servant |
Kathleen Chalfant |
Scene: The living room of a summer cottage. The walls are white varnished and glaring with afternoon sun. The furniture is wicker. Mrs. Fenway lies propped up on the settee. She is a heavy woman in lavender linen with dark perspiration stains about the arm-pits. Several strings of gaudy beads hang about her throat. She continually mops her forehead with a crumpled handkerchief. Her hair hangs fuzzily over her forehead. On the floor are movie-magazines and a pitcher of ice water.
Donald bears no resemblance to his mother. He is a thin sensitive youth who moves about the room as though searching for something.
MRS. FENWAY [irritably]: What makes you so restless, Donald?
DONALD: Nothing
MRS. FENWAY: Then sit still! I can’t bear to see you wandering around in that aimless way. Get you a book and read it.
DONALD: I’m tired of books.
MRS. FENWAY: I thought you could never get tired of books!
DONALD: There’s nothing in them but words.
MRS. FENWAY: What would you expect to find in them?
DONALD: Well, I’m tired of them.
MRS. FENWAY: You’re being petulant. I must say it isn’t very manly of you when you see the condition that I am in. I’m simply prostrated. What’s the use of leaving the city when it’s this hot on the lake?
DONALD: You’ll be back soon enough.
MRS. FENWAY: Oh, heavens! What was it your father said in the letter?
DONALD: He said he hoped your nervous condition was better.
MRS. FENWAY: I don’t mean that, you know what I mean. Something about money.
DONALD: Have you forgotten?
MRS. FENWAY: Give it here. [She takes the letter.] I can’t make it out, it’s all so jumbled, and my head goes around like a top.
DONALD: He says the season’s been cut short and we’ll have to come home the sixteenth. He’s planning to sell the cottage. And there’s something about me taking a job in the wholesale business.
MRS. FENWAY: Absurd! But I suppose we’ll have to come home. That’s tiresome.
DONALD: Yes.
MRS. FENWAY [petulantly]: I don’t want to go home. It’s hot here but heaven knows it’s better than that stifling apartment will be. And him wanting me to move into a cheaper place. The nerve of it. I’ll lay you ten to one he’s keeping a mistress. What did I do with the Empirin tablets? I can’t stand this headache another moment without screaming out loud and I have to play bridge with the Vincents at half-past four. Where are they? Donald!
DONALD: What?
MRS. FENWAY: Why do you stand there looking like that?
DONALD: Like what?
MRS. FENWAY: Like you were lost all the time.
DONALD: Is that how I look?
MRS. FENWAY: Yes. Have you fallen in love?
DONALD: No.
MRS. FENWAY: I wish you had. Then there might be some excuse for your acting so queerly. It’s no wonder you don’t make friends. People think you’re foolish when you go around looking like that. You ought to try and cultivate more—Donald! Where are you going?
DONALD: I’m going out on the lake for awhile.
MRS. FENWAY: No. Don’t.
DONALD: Why not?
MRS. FENWAY: You’re out there too much. You leave me alone all the time and I don’t know where you are.
DONALD: On the lake.
MRS. FENWAY: Yes, but you stay so long and it’s hot and my head swims. You don’t have to go rushing off every time I open my mouth to say something.
DONALD [sitting down again]: I’m sorry.
MRS. FENWAY: No, you aren’t. You aren’t sorry about a thing. You’re indifferent, that’s what. All you care about is mooning around out there on the lake. And you’re nearly grown. You’ll have to wake up pretty soon and take things more seriously. You can’t just dream your whole life away. Now that your father and I have separated things won’t be easy, you know. I shall probably have to take up a teaching contract or something though heaven knows how I shall manage, what with my head swimming as it does all the time and my misplaced vertebra and—Tell Anna to be sure and iron my white linen waist. It’s nearly four already. Do you hear me?
DONALD: Yes.
MRS. FENWAY: Is that all you have to say to me ever. Just “Yes”?
DONALD [rising and going to window]: What do you want me to say to you? Tell me and I’ll say it!
MRS. FENWAY [leaning back on sofa]: Oh, hush. The heat in here is terrific. I see black spots in front of my eyes again this afternoon. I suppose I’ll have to take up my chiropractic treatments again as soon as I get back to the city. When I think of returning to that dreadful apartment in the middle of August it makes my head swim. I guess we should have stayed on McPherson where at least we had southern exposure. And now him having the nerve to suggest I find a place that rents cheaper! He says he thinks with just the two of us he thinks I might dispense with the maid. Wants me to get rid of Anna! Isn’t that what he said?
DONALD: Yes
MRS. FENWAY: He knows I couldn’t exist without Anna. He said that just to provoke me. Where did I put those Empirin tablets? Anna’s always sticking things around in odd places. Getting old and absent-minded. See if she could have stuck them behind the tea service. Do you hear me, Donald?
DONALD: Yes. What did you say?
MRS. FENWAY: Oh! Me lying helpless with a splitting head and you just floating off into space! [She calls.] Anna!
[After a moment the old woman shuffles in.]
ANNA: Yes?
MRS. FENWAY: Where’s my Empirin?
ANNA: In your handbag. You want one?
MRS. FENWAY: Yes.
[Anna goes out and returns with a tablet.]
MRS. FENWAY: I don’t know how I shall ever pull myself together for this bridge game. If I didn’t know it was necessary for me to have some diversion I would just call the whole thing off. Mrs. Vincent is such a bore since she’s taken up mysticism. She gets messages now from cousins five or six generations back. I don’t believe a word of it! Anna. You won’t forget to iron my white linen waist?
ANNA [as she goes out]: No, ma’am.
MRS. FENWAY: She’s getting so dull. No, ma’am, yes, ma’am: Always the same tone of voice. [Picking up the letter.] Your father says here you’d best not make any plans for entering college this Fall since the—
DONALD: Don’t!
MRS. FENWAY: What?
DONALD: Read any more of it!
MRS. FENWAY: Yes, that’s you. You can’t stand to face anything disagreeable. You want to go on being a child all your life. Well, you’ll find out soon enough that it can’t be done. You’ll have to start taking on some responsibilities now that your father’s cut loose and gotten involved more than likely with some cheap woman!
DONALD: I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do! [He rises and goes over to the window again.] I don’t have to be anything but just what I am! [He faces her desperately] Oh, God, mother, I don’t want to go home! I hate it! I hate it! It’s like being caught in a hideous trap! [He covers his face and sits down on the window sill.] The brick walls and the concrete and the—the black fire-escapes! It’s them I hate most of all—fire-escapes! Don’t they think people who live in apartments need to escape from anything besides fire?
MRS. FENWAY: Donald! I wish you’d stop talking queerly!
DONALD: I dreamed I was on one last night.
MRS. FENWAY: On what?
DONALD: A fire-escape. An endless black fire-escape. I kept running and running, up it and down it, and I never got anywhere! At last I stopped running, I couldn’t run any further, and the black iron thing started twisting around me like a snake! I couldn’t breathe!
MRS. FENWAY: Stop it! In my nervous condition it’s a crime to make me listen to stuff like that! What did you eat before going to bed last night?
DONALD [laughing sharply]: Yes, blame it on my digestion! — I’m going out.
MRS. FENWAY: Where to?
DONALD: I told you. The lake.
MRS. FENWAY: Always the lake! And by yourself, too—it’s not normal! Before you go remind Anna once more about my white linen waist. She’s probably forgotten and— Oh, Donald! Before you go out I wish you would clean my white kid slippers.
DONALD [absently]: Your white kid slippers?
MRS. FENWAY: Yes. Will you do that for mother? [She rises.] I’d do it myself but I’m just too exhausted. This heat makes my head go around like a top. Goodness! I have a blister right on the ball of my foot! Don’t we get the Saturday Evening Post anymore? [She pushes the damp hair back from her forehead.] I really ought to stay in, the lake is so glaring, it’s just sure to make me dizzy walking along the drive. I don’t see why we ever got a cottage so far out of the way. Where’s the True Story? I promised Mrs. Vincent I’d let her have it. Donald! Pull that shade down! The lake is so glaring it hurts my eyes.
DONALD [obeying]: Anything else I can do for you?
MRS. FENWAY: No, but you won’t forget the kid slippers?
DONALD: I’ll fix them later.
MRS. FENWAY: Always later. You’re like your father in that respect. Procrastination about all things. Well, time doesn’t wait for people. [She pours a glass of water and flops down again on the divan.] It just keeps going along. You’ll find that out for yourself some day.
DONALD: Time? I don’t care about time. Time’s nothing.
MRS. FENWAY: Time is one thing that nobody ever gets away from.
DONALD: I do. I’ve gotten away from it.
MRS. FENWAY: Have you indeed!
DONALD: Yes, on the lake. There isn’t any time out there. It’s night or morning or afternoon but it’s never any particular time.
MRS. FENWAY: Donald!
[Donald turns toward her slowly.]
MRS. FENWAY: I don’t like to hear you talk like that. Young people don’t say crazy things like that. It sounds like you were—different—or queer or something. Don’t be like that, Donald. It isn’t fair to your mother. People will say that you’re not like the other boys and they’ll—they’ll avoid you. You’ll find yourself being left out of things all around. And you won’t like that. I want you to learn to be normal and sociable and able to—to take your place in the world. Myself, I’m a nervous wreck and your father, he always has been one of these fly-up-the-creeks, but you, Donald, you’ve got to be a strong, responsible man!
DONALD [after a pause]: Don’t worry about me.
MRS. FENWAY: I want you to grow up, Donald. Do you understand?
DONALD: Yes.
MRS. FENWAY: I’m sure that isn’t too much for your mother to ask. What became of that letter? I suppose I shall have to try and concentrate on the thing and see what he’s driving at. It’s all so jumbled. Some thing about the concert season being cut short and the [she begins reading snatches aloud]—“the season cut short—returning—hope that your—nervous condition is better”—hmm—“vacate the cottage by the sixteenth as it must be sold—must be—yes, sold!”—hmmm— [She turns several pages quickly. Donald slips out.] —“keeping separate establishments in the city—expenses so great—Donald perhaps can get a position with the Lanchester Wholesale firm—time that the boy settles down and—hmmm—let me know your decision—make plans—hmmm—” Oh, Lord—make plans—I can’t make any plans. [She looks up and notices Donald is gone.] Donald! Donald. [She takes off her glasses and leans back, fanning her sweating face with the letter.] WHEW! [She leans over and removes a garter which has left a red circle about her leg. She rubs it and groans. Then leans forward with a cross look on her face.] Anna! [Pause. She rises angrily.] Anna! COME HERE!
ANNA [entering]: Did you call, Ma’am?
MRS. FENWAY: Yes, who did you think!—
ANNA: What d’you want, Ma’am?
MRS. FENWAY [pausing]: Heavens! I can’t remember!
[Anna starts to shuffle out again.]
MRS. FENWAY: Oh, yes, my white linen waist. I have to wear it over to the Vincents’ at four-thirty. What time is it now?
ANNA: Fifteen of five.
MRS. FENWAY: Heavens, I’ll never make it on time! Anna, I wish you would try to remind me about my engagements. I don’t think it’s asking too much.
ANNA: Yes, ma’am.
MRS. FENWAY: And the shoes. I told Donald to clean them but he’s gone out again on the lake. Anna, sit down. What do you think of him going out on the lake like that?
ANNA. [seating herself]: He’s out there most of the time, Mrs. Fenway.
MRS. FENWAY: Yes, most of the time. It’s not natural. I’m afraid he’s a dreamer.
ANNA: Yes ma’am, that’s what he is.
MRS. FENWAY: Yes, a dreamer. One of those impractical persons like his father and I had so hoped he’d turn out different.
ANNA: They say that still water runs deep.
MRS. FENWAY: Yes, deep under the ground where nobody can see it! [Pause.] I don’t like that, Anna. I want him to be a normal young man.
ANNA: He’s a strange one.
MRS. FENWAY: Worse than his father ever was and that’s saying a lot.
ANNA: Maybe he needs to be put in a good private school, Mrs. Fenway.
MRS. FENWAY: On what? Anna, we’ve got no more money. In this letter my husband tells me the concert season’s cut short and he’ll be without funds till the middle of October. It means we come home the sixteenth and stew in that hot little apartment the rest of the summer. Open that window, Anna. No wonder it’s so stifling in here, we’ve got the lake breeze cut off. —Can you see Donald?
ANNA. [at the window]: He’s going down the wharf in his trunks.
MRS. FENWAY: Has he got the oars?
ANNA: No.
MRS. FENWAY: Then he’s swimming. That’s better. He won’t stay out so long swimming— Maybe I’ll call off my engagement and stay home and take a lukewarm bath to relax my nerves—which do you think I should do, Anna?
ANNA: I guess you’d better decide for yourself, Mrs. Fenway.
MRS. FENWAY: I can’t decide! I’ve still got a headache. I guess it’s from worrying so much about that boy. He’s never given me trouble but he’s been such a stranger to me, Anna, I never know what he is thinking.
ANNA: I think he’s sort of shy, Mrs. Fenway.
MRS. FENWAY: Shy, yes, terribly shy. Where are my Camels? [Lights cigarette.] He doesn’t like his schoolmates. Never did. And now his father wants him to stop school and go into the wholesale business, but I don’t think that Donald would be a success in the wholesale business. What do you think of it, Anna?
ANNA [pause]: No. I guess he wouldn’t, Mrs. Fenway. I guess Donald would be kind of lost in the wholesale business.
MRS. FENWAY: Yes, lost. That’s it. Completely lost in the wholesale business. [Pause.] I think he should go in for some kind of creative work like his father but the trouble is that the poor boy doesn’t seem to have any particular talent. Do you see that he’s got a talent for anything, Anna?
ANNA: No, ma’am.
MRS. FENWAY: He likes to hear his father play but he never cared to study music himself. And his grades at school are very mediocre, you know. It’s really quite a problem. The only thing he seems to care about is staying out here on the lake. All winter he talks about it and when spring comes he just seems to be living for the first of June when school closes and we come down here to the cottage and now the cottage is going to be sold and all and I just don’t know—Anna, put this letter back up on the mantel, just the sight of that man’s handwriting makes my head swim. I’ve been having black dots all day in front of my eyes. [She leans back.] I wish I could take an interest in mysticism or something like that. It seems to be so absorbing. Hasn’t the Saturday Evening Post come out yet this week?
ANNA [after a pause]: No, ma’am.
[There is a long pause in which we hear only the dull ticking of a clock.]
MRS. FENWAY: Take that clock out of here. The sound of it gets on my nerves.
ANNA [removing clock]: Is that all, Ma’am?
MRS. FENWAY: No, you’d better phone the Vincents that I’ll come after supper instead. I can’t let my bridge go entirely. Look out the window and see if Donald’s in swimming.
ANNA [at window]: Yes, Ma’am.
MRS. FENWAY [sharply]: He is or he isn’t?
ANNA: Yes, ma’am.
MRS. FENWAY [leaning back with eyes closed and one hand on her forehead]: He’s a strange boy. I never know what he is thinking about. He just looks at me with those sad far-away eyes of his—that remind me so much of his father’s. [She turns restlessly.] I think he needs some young friends. I would send him to one of those special schools where they give individual attention or something if it wasn’t just so expensive. He’s growing up so. He’ll be seventeen in September and still such a child.
ANNA [after a pause]: That’s a funny age, Mrs. Fenway.
MRS. FENWAY [sighing]: Yes. Adolescence.
ANNA [sitting down by the window with hands folded and a distant look in her eyes]: They get so mixed up at that age. [Pause.] I remember I had funny ideas about things then. It was all very big and important and I thought that if I didn’t get what I wanted the sun would stop coming up.
[Pause. Anna blinks her eyes and remains motionless. A faint breeze stirs the gauzy white curtains.]
MRS. FENWAY: Even the wind is hot this afternoon. And the lake is so glaring. I don’t see how he stands it out there. Is he swimming?
ANNA [turning slowly toward the open window]: Yes, Ma’am.
MRS. FENWAY: He’s just a dreamer. Like his father was. I flatter myself that I took some of that nonsense out of his father, though!
[A long pause with clock ticking and Anna seated with hands folded and distant grey eyes.]
MRS. FENWAY: What are you looking at?
ANNA: There’s a gull flying over the lake. A white one.
MRS. FENWAY: I despise them! They sound like rats squeaking. Is Donald still swimming?
ANNA: Yes, he’s swum out quite far. I can just see his head in the sun.
MRS. FENWAY [turning fretfully]: Yes, just a dreamer. Just like his father was before I got him to settle down. I never have quite understood people like that, Anna. They’re like quicksilver. You can’t put your fingers on them. Slippery. Senseless. There’s no use trying to make them do like they should. —I hope Donald hasn’t swum out very far.
ANNA: He’s out pretty far.
MRS. FENWAY: Hasn’t he turned back in yet?
ANNA: No, Ma’am, he’s still swimming straight out.
MRS. FENWAY: He’s a very good swimmer, though he was late in learning. At first he was afraid of the water, then all of a sudden he got so he loved it and ever since then the lake has been his main object in life. I think that’s very odd of him, don’t you, Anna? He doesn’t seem to care for the companionship of other young people. I do so hope that he doesn’t turn out to be just like his…
[Her voice trails off and she turns on the other side. Again we hear the clock ticking.]
MRS. FENWAY: I thought I told you to take the clock out. I can still hear it ticking.
ANNA: It’s in the next room, Mrs. Fenway.
MRS. FENWAY: I guess I should have gone to play bridge.
ANNA: Yes, Ma’am.
MRS. FENWAY: Has Donald come in to shore yet?
ANNA: No, Ma’am, he’s still swimming out.
MRS. FENWAY: Heavens! Still swimming out? [She rises awkwardly and shuffles over to the window.]
ANNA: Yes, Ma’am, he’s still swimming out.
MRS. FENWAY: Heavens! Can you see him?
ANNA: Yes, Ma’am, that little dark spot’s his head.
MRS. FENWAY: Anna! He’s never swum out that far before!
ANNA: No, ma’am.
MRS. FENWAY: Where is he now? I can’t see him!
ANNA: He’s still swimming out.
MRS. FENWAY: Out?
ANNA: Yes, Ma’am, still further out.
MRS. FENWAY: Why doesn’t he turn back in? Anna! Run down to the shore and call him back in. Quick, quick, before he— [She thrusts her head out the window and screams.] Donald!
[There is a long pause. Anna slowly raises a hand to her throat. Mrs. Fenway staggers away from the window.]
MRS. FENWAY: The sunlight blinds me. I can’t see him anymore. Everything is black in front of my eyes. I can’t see a thing. Where is he now? Has he turned back? [A pause.] I’m so faint. Lightheaded. What’s happened? [She sinks into a wicker chair in the center of the room.] Bring me a glass of water and my—my drops. [Pause.] Has Donald come back to shore yet?
[Anna turns slowly away from the window and as she does so she crosses herself.]
ANNA: No.
[Pause.]
MRS. FENWAY [sharply]: Why do you look at me like that?
[Pause.]
ANNA: No.
[Pause.]
MRS. FENWAY [screaming]: Answer me!
[A long pause.]
ANNA: No. He didn’t come back.
CURTAIN