I don’t have a lot to say about this play—not because I don’t like it or anything dramatic like that, but simply because I think it sort of speaks for itself. It is what it is and I hope that’s a lot.
Some Girl(s) sprang from a desire to do something a little different: an entertainment made up of a series of duets that features a hearty number of women’s roles and follows the journey of a modern-day Candide as he stumbles through a landscape familiar to most men—the mess he’s made of his romantic life on his way to manhood. I think it’s a great part for the right man, and I was pretty damn lucky to find that guy(s) in the form of David Schwimmer and Eric McCormack, two fellows who understand comedy better than most of us understand breathing. Their dedication to the part has been and remains an inspiration.
I’ve always been an ardent admirer of the cinema of Eric Rohmer, that master chronicler of the always charming sexual escapades of his fellow Parisians, and I suppose Some Girl(s) is my attempt to capture a bit of that gentle, wise, funny spirit on the theatrical stage. Rohmer just seems to get it; in film after film he simply allows people to “be” and then stands back, amused, at the inevitable high jinks that follow. His trilogy of perfect films from the late ’60s—early ’70s (My Night at Maud’s, Claire’s Knee, and Chloe in the Afternoon) remains the benchmark by which stories of love and lust must be measured.
Translation from one language to another is always a funny thing—one of Rohmer’s films is simply known as Boyfriends and Girlfriends in the United States. After doing a bit of research, however, I learned that the picture was originally titled My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, which really knocked me out. So simple,
so clever; that one title embodies all that is right with European cinema on the whole and Rohmer in particular. We Americans are full of spirit and can-do hustle, without question, but we’re often a ham-fisted bunch; gentle irony is usually the last thing on our fast-paced minds. Rohmer is cool simply by existing and creating what he does; the results seem effortless. Frankly, I admire the shit out of him (an American phrase if ever there was one!). I hope I have cornered even a bit of his wily, bracing, and humane essence within these pages.