Playwright: adapted by Terry McCabe and Marissa McKown from the novel by Frederick Kohner
At: City Lit Theatre at the Edgewater Presbyterian Church, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr
Phone: 773-293-3682; $25
Runs through: June 3
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
Long ago, before teenagers affected African-American ghetto slang or fake Liverpool dialects—hell, before there was such a word as 'teenager'—the icons of adolescent America were the youthful citizenry of the southwest California coast, lounging nearly naked in eternal sunshine on the sandy shores with nothing to do but swim and surf in tropical innocence. The Beach Boys are the troubadours most often cited today as the mythologizers of this fleeting innocence, but even earlier than Surfin' Safari was a 1959 film based on a 1956 novel by Frederick Kohner recounting the coming-of-age story of a girl not unlike his own daughter.
Contemporary critical comparisons to Catcher in the Rye might nowadays seem inflated, if not for the distinctive first-person narrative voices employed by both Salinger and Kohner—an identifying feature whose absence from Gidget's film and television adaptations contributed to the trivialization of its topic. But in this City Lit page-to-stage production, authors Terry McCabe and Marissa McKown take full advantage of their pint-sized ( 'Gidget' in surfer slang ) heroine's propensity for sharing her candid opinions on the topics of parents, boys and s-e-x.
Playgoers recalling the ethos reflected in this lightweight cultural artifact will bask in its nostalgic portrait of a time when Malibu was still a community playground and not a theme-park for Hollywood celebrities, when surfing had its own arcane jargon ( 'pearl dives,' 'boneyards' and 'shooting the curl' ) , and even hormone-riddled boys declared 'good girls' off limits, following the example of their mentor, The Great Kahoona, a jaded drifter ( 'on the oldish side—around the end of the twenties or so' ) whose avuncular attentions ease the naive surfer-wannabe's scary journey to maturity.
And for younger audience members, secure in their 21st-century sophistication, the observations of Kohners pére et fille offer an authentic assessment of an era now recalled almost solely for its darker aspects. Indeed, so wholly were the opening-night attendees engaged by the charm and confidence Sabrina Kramnich brings to her exuberant persona that a confession by hottie Moondog to a smitten Gidget that he loved another girl drew a show-stopping gasp from one female spectator. Even 50 years after the fact, romance has no age limit—nor does the search for personal independence.