It's Memorial Day, 1990, and Margaret Ryan has returned from Vermont to
the Ontario cottage country where, thirty-two years before, she had
vacationed with her disintegrating family at a lakeside resort. For
herself and her sister Daisy, it was a time of awakening, a time of
discovery.
Both of the girls fall in love with two of the local boys. Daisy, on the
lookout for action, cruising the dances at the resort, can't deal with
what she initiates, and falls victim to her own confusion and naiveté.
Not even the neighbour, the eccentric, bourbon-drinking, cigar-smoking
Mrs. Crump, who knows all the fairy-tale spells to capture the heart of
a lover, can save Daisy from drowning in her own misadventure.
At the same time, Margaret, bookish and withdrawn, inhabiting a universe
defined by poets and novelists, is seduced in spite of herself.
As Margaret, the narrator, watches Maggie, her younger self, relive the
innocence and beauty of that summer, the play moves inexorably back to
the heartbreak of a headlong surrender to experience, both won and lost
in a single day.
Cinematic in its feel and pacing, recalling the 1950s genre of Dirty
Dancing and My American Cousin, That Summer is a meditation on what
endures of fleeting moments over time.
Cast of 5 women and 2 men.
