Same time another year ebook

I was very calm. It was old Mr. Chalmers with my breakfast. I have a friend who went into the wine business near here. I fly out the same weekend every year to do his books. I know I must appear very smooth and glib — sexually. Go ahead. I had to be able to really like the person before … What do you mean — you could tell? In what way could you tell? Little things like that. I thought it would make me seem less married. I mean denying little Debbie like that.

You understand? Sure, we all do dopey things sometimes. No thank you. Doris, do you believe that two perfect strangers can look at each other across a crowded room and suddenly want to possess each other in every conceivable way possible?

Then when I looked over and you toasted me with your fork with a big piece of steak on it, that really made me laugh. I never saw anybody do that before. What made you do it? Usually I never do that sort of thing. I was lonely and you looked so vulnerable. You had a run in your stocking and your lipstick was smeared. I go every year at this time when Harry takes the kids to Bakersfield. She blocks that out of her mind. You see, he was in his first year of dental college and he had to quit and take a job selling waterless cooking.

And so now every year on her birthday I go on retreat. Well, Him too, sure. See I have three little kids. I got pregnant the first time when I was eighteen and so I never really had any time to think about what I want. Well, take my life. I live in a two bedroom duplex in downtown Oakland, we have a Kaiser, a blond three piece dinette set, Motorola TV, and we go bowling at least once a week. I mean what else could anyone ask for? But sometimes things get me down, you know?

Boy, I can really talk to you. I noticed that yesterday right after we met in the restaurant. No, but I know we really hit it off. How about your wife. Do you two talk a lot? My uncle has one of those.

I could be a million miles away, but if I even look at another girl she knows it. Last night at I just know she sat bolt upright in bed with her head going, ding, ding, ding, ding! This entry was posted in Books and tagged scripts. Bookmark the permalink.

Man, for a while there he was in everything! I can see why you would want to play this part so much. Doris is such a delight. And what a good story. Does the play end the same way the film does? I remember it was somewhat sad. Also quite sad in the middle, when she finds out that his son has been killed during the intervening year.

Is all of that in there? Sheila — yup — all of that is in there. There is a kind of bittersweetness to the ending — but you do get the sense that these people just absolutely love each other.

Hey … where can I get the entire play script to read….. Or buy it. Your email address will not be published. Maturing into their late sixties, Doris and George share the inevitabilities of aging and the convolutions of parenting and grandparenting as they redefine love outside of their annual tryst and romance within it.

Hilarity and tenderness are perfectly b Get A Copy. Paperback , pages. Published January 7th by Samuel French, Inc. More Details Original Title. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Same Time, Another Year , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about Same Time, Another Year.

Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Joel Fishbane. Author 4 books 18 followers. I'm obsessed with this thirty-five year old play and I don't know why. Bernard Slade's Broadway success has been wildly successful, garnering international productions, a movie with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn, a musical and a sequel.

I have no doubt it's Slade's "annuity play", meaning he probably make a comfortable living off the royalties - the show is a staple of community theatre and summer stock. And now, after catching the latest production in Montreal, the play won't stop its ceaseless march through my brain.

The premise of the play is as elegant as it is simple: George and Doris, married to other people, meet once a year to continue an affair started one weekend in Each scene takes place at roughly five year intervals, allowing us to see the march of history reflected through the lovers - Doris goes through women's lib, George loses a son in Vietnam.

The original play shows the lovers between and ; the sequel runs from - From a producer's standpoint it's a bit of a wet dream: a single set, two actors, the nostalgia factor.

Actors meanwhile love the play because it provides a good showcase for their skills. But I'm a writer first and the script is what impressed me the most. Musical theatre icon Stephen Sondheim once remarked that simplicity "takes the most effort in the world" and this is what struck me most about Slade's work. There's no plot and each scene is a single dialogue, done in real time. This is a play about character and character is always the hardest thing to write.

Yet Slade makes it look effortless: George and Doris evolve and transform and yet never learn the essence of who they once were. Slade essentially wrote six one-act plays twelve, if you count the sequel and each one is a self-contained animal, much like a short story collection in which the stories are linked but exist perfectly on their own.

Equally noteworthy - especially given the play's immense popularity - is that it is a quietly subversive piece in that it champions adultery. Neither George or Doris are in terrible marriages - though they exchange "good" and "bad" stories of their home life, it becomes clear early on that they love their spouses.

Though they have children, they aren't the reason neither George or Doris ever discuss divorce. Early on, they wrestle with the morals of their affair but before long they have come to accept Slade's unstated thesis: that no one person can ever satisfy our emotional or sexual needs. None of this is directly discussed: the comedy and charm of the writing turns both the original and its companion into perfect spoonfuls of sugar. One could theorize that the play's tremendous popularity would imply that most of us, on some level, accept Slade's theory as fact.

The play is, in a way, the perfect piece of pornography for the married middle class. Just as pornography portrays sex without consequence, so do does Slade's play portray adultery without punishment. Have audiences been allowing George and Doris to act out their greatest fantasy for thirty-five years?

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