Same Time, Next Year

Bernard Slade wrote Same Time, Next Year in 1975 – though the themes are no less relevant nearly forty years on. Two people meet in a hotel, wake up next to each other the next morning, and though both happily married to other people, continue to meet up just once each year, on the anniversary, and in the same hotel room of their first encounter. They become intimate much more than just physically, and over the next twenty-five years, the couple share their many neuroses, struggles and successes, within the context of the ever-changing world they inhabit.

Directed by Jude Hines, in the intimacy of the main stage of the soon-to-be-lost Bakehouse Theatre, this love story is warmly and wonderfully played out by the two actors. Patrick Clements (George) and Allison Scharber (Doris) are beautiful together, the fast-flowing dialogue bouncing off each other so naturally, with great humour and emotional depth right from the opening ‘Good morning’. There’s an intimacy here that is achieved through dialogue and subtle body language, not through in-your-face physicality. Clements and Scharber are brilliant at exchanging their energies in a scene, and you need to be with someone who looks at you the way Doris looks at George when he’s being neurotic.

Hines has paced her talented performers perfectly: the two hours race by but it never feels rushed. The comedic timing is always spot-on – and even if you see the gag coming, it’s always funny. The audience is absorbed in their own laughter, then bang! A shock and we audibly gasp in despair. The sudden change in mood and tempo is so heartfelt and invoked from stage to seat. Our investment in this couple is real: we genuinely care for them, and it is a tremendous effort for Hines, Scharber and Clements to achieve that so quickly.

It’s played out on Gary Anderson’s effective single set: the hotel room, with a bed, dresser, sofa and grand piano! Whilst the narrative covers three decades, we know exactly where we are through the styles of their hair and clothes, their choice of drink, their political attitudes – and the bedspread in their hotel room.

Between scenes, whilst the stage manager (Lari Paynter, in the uniform of a hotel worker) re-dresses the set, we are transported to key moments in history through radio news broadcasts and music from that time. From crises in Suez, Cuba and Vietnam, to the assassinations of JFK and MLK, the conflicts of the outside world contrast with the love and affection overflowing from George and Doris, even as the audience sings along.