Betty's Summer Vacation

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Betty's Summer Vacation is a play by Christopher Durang

In many ways, this play was a “comeback” hit for Durang. His career flourished in the late seventies and early eighties with off-Broadway smashes like The Marriage of Bette and Boo and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You. By the late eighties, critics grew unkind, and Durang turned more to his career as a “cameo” in a variety of moderately successful films. In 1995, Manhattan Theatre Club produced Durang/Durang, an evening of very well-received, new, short pieces by Durang. This was the appetizer to a comeback, and theatre fans were anxiously awaiting a main course. It came in the form of a Broadway opening . . . Sex And Longing, a critical disaster of monumental proportions. Durang laid dormant for a while, heading up alongside Marsha Norman the Playwriting program at Juilliard. On February 19, 1999, Betty’s Summer Vacation premiered off Broadway at Playwright’s Horizons. The critics smiled. The theatre community smiled. A voice that had been sadly missing had finally returned. The production was directed by Nicholas Martin and starred Kellie Overbey as Betty. Durang won an Obie, as did set designer Thomas Lynch and actor Kristine Nelson for her portrayal of Mrs. Siezmagraff.

Under the direction of Nicholas Martin, the play was produced at the Huntington Theatre a few years later with Andrea Martin playing Mrs. Siezmagraff.

[edit] Brief Plot Analysis

When BETTY signs up for a summer timeshare with her garrulous mate, TRUDY, she is in need of peace and quiet to contrast her stressful life as a single, city-dwelling young woman of the 90s. Tranquility ceases, alas, within moments of her arrival at the beach house by way of TRUDY’S broken promise to “not talk too much;” a sudden, inexplicable laugh track from an unknown source; and the arrival of the other guests: (1) KEITH, a shy, homosexual serial killer who maintains a collection of body parts and hat boxes; (2) MRS. SIEZMAGRAFF, the landlady and, apparently, TRUDY’S mother, who, apparently, responded with jealousy when TRUDY was apparently serially molested by the alcoholic, wife-beating, recently deceased Mr. Siezmagraff; (3) BUCK, an unashamedly horny frat-like lout; and finally (4) MR. VANISLAW, a flasher befriended by MRS. SIEZMAGRAFF after a recent fitting-room photography incident. What starts off with a mildly disturbing game of charades escalates into TRUDY and KEITH castrating and beheading, respectively, MR. VANISLAW, whose penis is now being stored in the freezer, and BUCK who is incited by the THE THREE FIGURES from the laugh track into attempted rape on KEITH. Climactically, the laugh track voices burst out of the ceiling, demanding a Court TV-style trial of TRUDY and KEITH, which MRS. SIEZMAGRAFF quite happily and manically provides. Ultimately, TRUDY and KEITH, under the influence of the voices, blow up the house, leaving BETTY alone on the beach to find peace and tranquility as she listens to the sound of the waves.