Betty's Summer Vacation
- Written by Christopher Durang
- Directed by Nicholas Martin
Christopher Durang is a playwright whose plays include A History of the American Film (Tony nomination, Best Book of a Musical, 1978), The Actor’s Nightmare, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You (Obie award; off-Bway run 1981-83), Beyond Therapy (on Broadway in 1982, with Dianne Wiest and John Lithgow), Baby with the Bathwater (Playwrights Horizons, 1983), The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Public Theatre, 1985; Obie award, Dramatists Guild Hull Warriner Award), Laughing Wild (Playwrights Horizons, 1987), Durang/Durang (an evening of six plays at Manhattan Theatre Club, 1994, including the Tennessee Williams’ parody, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls), Sex and Longing (Lincoln Center Theatre production at the Cort Theatre, 1996, starring Sigourney Weaver), and Betty’s Summer Vacation (Playwrights Horizons, 1999; Obie award). (As of November 2005)
His most recent works are Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge, which premiered at City Theatre in Pittsburgh in 2002. And the musical Adrift in Macao, with music by Peter Melnick and book and lyrics by Durang, which premiered at New York Stage and Film in summer 2002, and is under option for off-Broadway 2003-04.
Durang is also a performer, and acted with E. Katherine Kerr in the N.Y. premiere of Laughing Wild, and with Jean Smart in the L.A. production. He shared in an acting ensemble Obie for The Marriage of Bette and Boo; and with John Augustine and Sherry Anderson has performed his crackpot cabaret Chris Durang and Dawne at the Criterion Center, Caroline’s Comedy Club, Williamstown Summer Cabaret, and the Triad, winning a 1996 Bistro Award.
In the early 80s, he and Sigourney Weaver co-wrote and performed in their acclaimed Brecht-Weill parody, Das Lusitania Songspiel, and were both nominated for Drama Desk awards for Best Performer in a Musical.
In 1993 he sang in the five person off-Broadway Sondheim revue, Putting It Together, with Julie Andrews at the Manhattan Theatre Club. And he played a singing Congressman in the Encores presentation of Call Me Madam with Tyne Daly at City Center.
In movies, he has appeared in The Secret of My Success, Mr. North, The Butcher’s Wife, Housesitter, and The Cowboy Way, among others.
He has a B.A. from Harvard College, and an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Yale School of Drama.
In 1995 he won the prestigious three-year Lila Wallace Readers Digest Writers Award; as part of his grant, he ran a writing workshop for adult children of alcoholics. In 2000 he won the Sidney Kingsley Playwriting Award.
Grove Press publishes several of his plays. Smith and Kraus recently published two new collections: Christopher Durang: 27 Short Plays and Christopher Durang: Complete Full-Length Plays (1975-1995). Grove has recently published Betty’s Summer Vacation.
Since 1994 he has been co-chair with Marsha Norman of the Playwriting Program at the Juilliard School in Manhattan.
He is a member of the Dramatists Guild Council.
NICHOLAS MARTIN served as artistic director of the Huntington Theatre Company from 2000 through 2008, where he directed The Corn Is Green, She Loves Me, Present Laughter, Persephone, The Cherry Orchard, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Sisters Rosensweig (IRNE Award, Best Director), Laughing Wild, The Rivals (IRNE Award, Best Director), Sonia Flew (IRNE Awards, Best Play and Best Director), The Rose Tattooo, Butley, Springtime for Henry, A Month in the Country, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Betty’s Summer Vacation (Elliot Norton Award, Best Director), Hedda Gabler, Fully Committed, and Dead End. Broadway credits include Present Laughter, Butley, Match, Hedda Gabler, and The Rehearsal. Off Broadway credits include Why Torture is Wrong, and The People Who Love Them (The Public Theater); Saturn Returns, The New Century, Observe the Sons of Ulster . . . (Drama Desk Award nomination), The Time of the Cuckoo, and Chaucer in Rome (Lincoln Center Theater); Fully Committed (Vineyard Theatre and Cherry Lane Theatre); Full Gallop (Manhattan Theatre Club and West Side Arts); You Never Can Tell (Roundabout Theatre Company); Betty’s Summer Vacation (OBIE Award, Drama Desk Award nomination) and Sophistry (Playwrights Horizons); and Bosoms and Neglect (Signature Theatre). Regional credits include The House of Blue Leaves (Mark Taper Forum); Dead End (Ahmanson Theatre); Macbeth (The Old Globe), and the West Coast and London productions of Full Gallop. Mr. Martin is the artistic director of Williamstown Theatre Festival where his directing credits include Knickerbocker, She Loves Me, The Corn Is Green, Where’s Charley?, Camino Real, Dead End, and The Royal Family among others.
Betty needs to get away from it all and lucks out on her first summer share in the Hamptons! But her luck turns to delicious lunacy when this sensible everywoman gets drawn into the chaotic world of her very unsavory housemates — her friend Trudy who talks way too much, the lewd buff boy who likes to grope, and the curiously reclusive man with the hat box. With sand between her toes, and a thin line between sanity and survival, this vacation might leave Betty more terrorized than tan.
Featuring
Guy Boyd
Geneva Carr
Nat DeWolf
Jack Ferver
Julie Lund
Kristine Nielsen
Kellie Overbey
Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.
Troy Sostillio
Playwrights Horizons: Betty’s Summer Vacation. New York: Take Me Out (Broadway and The Public), The Wasps. Regional: The Lonely Planet, The Show Off, The Drowsy Chaperone, The Violet Hour, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, Burn This. Film: Lisa Picard is Famous (also co-author), A Most Violent Year, The Preppie Connection, We Are What We Are. TV: “Gotham,” “The Black List,” “Pan Am,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Ed.”
Playwrights: Betty’s Summer Vacation. Jack’s works have been presented in New York City at the New York Live Arts, New Museum, The Kitchen, The French Institute Alliance Française, Abrons Arts Center, Gibney Dance, PS122, Museum of Arts and Design, Danspace Project, and Dixon Place. He is a 2016 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant. He teaches at Bard College and has also taught at NYU, SUNY Purchase, American Dance Festival, Interlochen Center for the Arts, and has set choreography at The Juilliard School. As an actor he has appeared in numerous films and television series. jackferver.org
Updated as of 12/10/19
Playwrights: Gus and Al, Betty’s Summer Vacation, Miss Witherspoon, Crazy Mary, Hir. WP Theater debut. Broadway: Gary, Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike, Present Laughter, and You Can’t Take It with You, among others. Nielsen has performed in numerous Off Broadway and regional theater productions, and has appeared on many TV series. She is currently in HBO’s The Gilded Age and just finished shooting Coup!, an independent film.
Playwrights Horizons: The Savannah Disputation (Lortel nomination) and Betty’s Summer Vacation. Broadway: The Coast of Utopia, Twentieth Century, “QED”, Judgment at Nuremberg, Present Laughter and Buried Child. Numerous Off-Broadway includes most recently Keen Company’s Lemon Sky. Notable film & TV: Sweet and Lowdown, Outbreak, “Unforgettable,” “The Good Wife,” “Law & Order,” “The Job” and “The Stand.” Also a writer, Kellie wrote the screenplay for the film That’s What She Said (directed by Carrie Preston) which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2012 and will be distributed by Phase 4 Films this fall. Plays: Girl Talk, Once Around the Sun and My Wife’s Coat (Samuel French). (As of May 2012)
Creative Team
Thomas Lynch
Scenic DesignerMichael Krass
Costume DesignerKevin Adams
Lighting DesignerKurt B. Kellenberger
Sound DesignerPeter Golub Production
Original MusicKelly Kirkpatrick
Production Stage Manager
Photo of (1) Guy Boyd, Kellie Overbey, Troy Sostillio, Nat DeWolf, Julie Lund, and Kristine Nielsen; (2) Nat DeWolf, Kristine Nielsen, Jack Ferver, Geneva Carr, and Godfrey L. Simmons Jr.; (3) Kellie Overbey, Julie Lund, Kristine Nielsen, and Nat DeWolf by Joan Marcus.
An ecstatically angry new comedy that suggests that Western civilization is ending not with a bang but with a laugh track. Please welcome Mr. Durang back to the ranks of America's liveliest living playwrights.