By Charlotte K. Jarmy

Kevin Berne, Special to the Town Crier

Theater Review

We are light years away from the atmosphere, music and language of “The Summer of ‘42,” but the play resonates on our memories of young love and the coltish emotions of teenagers.

TheatreWorks has produced a musical based closely on the original film. “Summer,” book by Hunter Foster, with music and lyrics by David Kirshenbaum, can be called a memory play, a coming of age story or a journey into the loss of innocence. Actually, it is all three.

Acted with an authentic blend of humor, teen high jinks and emotional reaction to human need, the play reaches out to all age groups. The central plot concerns three teen-age boys whose fantasies wrap themselves around love and sexual relationships. Hermie (Ryan Driscoll), Oscy (Brett Tabisel) and Benjie (Jason Marcus), whose raging hormones guide their daydreams, spend a lot of time at a beach on the New England coast. Each young actor successfully builds a character familiar to most of us: Hermie is the idealistic, nice kid-next-door; Oscy is the verbally crude but funny boy on the prowl; and Benjie is the nerdy bird-watcher who screams when a girl makes any overtures.

Their familiar goofiness and fantasies are part of the memory play, which has an older Hermie returning to the beach and gazing at the little house he remembers with sweet melancholy.

Here, Hermie meets the lovely Dorothy, played by Kate Jennings Grant, whose beauty and musical talent make her a delight every time she takes the stage. Of the three boys, it is Hermie who becomes enamored and awkward each time he talks to the lonely wife of a soldier in the Pacific during World War II. Oscy warns Hermie, “That’s a very old person.”

Three teen-age girls play the objects of the boys’ realistic ventures into dating. The girls are Miriam (Megan Valerie Walker), a gregarious sexpot; Aggie (Celia Keenan-Bolger), a cute girl-next-door type; and Gloria (Erin Webley), the serious girl with glasses who pursues the terrified Benjie. They also sing songs that set the mood as well as being examples of 1940s swing music.

Walter Winchell (Bill Kux) represents the outside world as he relates the dramatic events of the war. In an effective scene, well planned by director Gabriel Barre, the teens sit in a movie house where the boys make clumsy attempts to grope Aggie and Miriam. Although wonderfully funny and realistic, Hermie and Oscy have different results.

Hermie’s interactions with the “older” woman also become more humorous as he tries to appear older. But tragedy enters the story and brings about a tremendous change in the relationship between Hermie and Dorothy. It develops the theme of innocence lost and the beginning of maturity for Hermie, echoed in the song “The Summer You’ll Always Remember.”

The cast works beautifully together. The voices of Driscoll, Grant and Keenan-Bolger deserve praise both for their skill and warm presentation.

Orchestra conductor Lynne Shankel helps recreate the lively music that sets the tone of the era.

“Summer” runs through Sunday at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets: 903-6000.