The Valuable Lesson play tends be predictable: Somebody somehow ends up learning a heartwarming thing or two about life and one’ s self.
This is exactly what happens in “What I Did Last Summer,” but it’s easy to overlook the story’s banality since the show’s warmly engaging, inventively staged and elevated by a wonderful cast.
Playwright A.R. Gurney mined his upstate New York upbringing in many semiautobiographical shows, from “The Cocktail Hour” to “The Grand Manner,” so it’s no surprise that the sepia-toned “Summer,” from 1981, is well-crafted: The guy knows what he’s doing.
This time around Gurney takes us back to 1945, when 14-year-old Charlie (Noah Galvin) is summering on Lake Erie’s Canadian side. With his dad away fighting in the Pacific, Charlie’s getting antsy, stuck between his prim mom, Grace (Carolyn McCormick), and bookish older sister, Elsie (Kate McGonigle). To earn pocket money, he signs up to do odd jobs for the local eccentric, Anna Trumbull (Kristine Nielsen).
Gossip swirls around Anna, who’s described as an “artist manquée”: “It means she gives art lessons, but nobody takes them,” explains Charlie’s crush, Bonny (Juliet Brett).
Anna, whose gray braids make her look vaguely like Patti Smith, ends up tutoring Charlie about painting, sculpting, and fulfilling his potential. She’s the Auntie Mame of the Great Lakes.
The show explores well-trod terrain as it tracks Charlie and Anna’s growing friendship and its inevitable bittersweet end. But you’re happy to go along because those clichés are so nicely wrapped: Jim Simpson’s production has a sparse charm — drummer Dan Weiner provides a live score and sound effects from the side of the mostly bare stage — and the actors are uncommonly lovely. Nielsen, last seen in Broadway’s “You Can’t Take It With You,” tones down her habitual comic mannerisms and is especially affecting when Anna meets her comeuppance.
But it’s Galvin who pulls the show together. At 21, he makes for a convincing teenager — a feat he’s set to repeat in the upcoming ABC sitcom “The Real O’Neals” — and he’s especially funny when Charlie’s often.
“What I Did Last Summer” isn’t going to win points for audacity, but neither is mac and cheese. That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy them.
