“The Long Weekend,” Norm Foster’s classic comedy of bad manners

By Fredric Dannen

There comes a moment in the second act of Norm Foster’s classic stage comedy “The Long Weekend,” when Wynn Trueman, a psychologist who shares a country home with her high-powered lawyer husband, Max, announces that she has just published a new book. The title is “Internalize and Die” and its theme, she says, is “how harmful it is to suppress your feelings, to hold things in.”

How much more peaceful “The Long Weekend” of the play’s title might have been had the four characters in the story ignored that advice. In the living room of the Truemans’ summer house, two married couples, Wynn and Max, and Wynn’s best friend, clothing store proprietor Abby, and her math-teacher-turned-screenwriter husband, Roger, hold back precious little. Over the course of about an hour and fifty minutes, during which audiences are typically laughing almost continuously, the foursome tells one too many uncomfortable truths about one another. Soon all the gloves come off as the married couples go after each other’s spouses in a game of mixed doubles that has nothing to do with Max’s private tennis court.

Norm Foster has been called the Neil Simon of Canada. His plays receive an average of 150 productions annually, making him by far the most produced playwright in his country’s history. His plays export well; the Los Angeles Times, reviewing a California production of “The Long Weekend,” concluded: “Norm Foster scores a bullseye with this tickling romp about mismatched spouses.”

Players Workshop, one of San Miguel’s oldest theater companies, is staging Foster’s play, in full production, eight times at the San Miguel Playhouse. The performances are January 26, 27, and 28, and February 2, 3, and 4 at 7pm; and January 29 and February 5 at 1pm. Tickets are 500 pesos for the center section and 400 pesos for side sections, and can be purchased in advance online from boletocity.com, or at the door of the theater starting one hour before each show. The Playhouse is located at Avenida Independencia 82, and offers secured street parking and taxi concierge service.

The director, Brian Munroe, is a Canadian theater professional who only recently moved to San Miguel with his wife and daughter. He says he is excited to be working in San Miguel for the first time, and commends “the contributions of my wonderful cast.” “The Long Weekend” features Gerri Baruch, Cristopher Berns, Clara Dunham, and Eli Hans.

The theater repertory is replete with plays in which friends or family members are stuck together in a house and the enforced proximity turns into a cage match. In dramas such as “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” the bloodletting can get ugly. But the device also lends itself to comedy. Noël Coward perfected the form in his 1924 play “Hay Fever,” and gave the subgenre a name: the comedy of bad manners. Norm Foster’s “tickling romp” has become an audience favorite in that subgenre.

Theater

“The Long Weekend,” a comedy by Norm Foster

Directed by Brian Munroe, featuring Gerri Baruch, Cristopher Berns, Clara Dunham, and Eli Hans

Thurs., Jan. 26; Fri., Jan. 27; Sat., Jan. 28; and Thurs., Feb. 2; Fri., Feb. 3; and Sat., Feb. 4, at 7pm; Sun., Jan. 29 and Sun., Feb. 5, at 1pm

San Miguel Playhouse, Av. Independencia 82

400, 500 pesos

Advance sale at boletocity.com, or at the door