Same Time, Next Year Sets a Valentine's Date at PACA

Diggit Dave Schroeder

Ken Brundage and Adele Crotty will star in a one-night-only Valentine's Day performance of Same Time, Next Year, which explores the complex annual affair of two people who are happily married to other people.

Wednesday, Feb. 14

Valentine's Day is a tricky one. It's a day we build hope and expectations onto and one that can often elude even the most romantic among us. Pressure, timing, and sentimentality are hard at work, both on Valentine's Day and in the riveting script of Bernard Slade's Same Time, Next Year.

Perhaps best known for the 1978 film adaptation starring Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn (one that is tragically un-streamable currently), Same Time, Next Year will be staged by the Performing Arts Collective Alliance (PACA) for a special Valentine's Day performance directed by Betsy Butoryak and starring Adelle Crotty and Ken Brundage. It's a hybrid staged reading performance, one complete with scene changes and set dressers, with off-book moments from two of Erie's most talented actors. Tickets for the performance include an opening reception with hors d'oeuvres catered by Cali's West, with wine, Blind Tiger spirit-free cocktails, and more taking place at City Gallery next door to PACA. There will also be an art exhibit by Lara Schaaf in PACA's second-floor gallery, and a dessert served at intermission.

Not unlike last year's special Love Letters event, this play illustrates a thoroughly unconventional love story, but one that is overcome by heart and honesty.

At a seaside resort, George (Brundage) and Doris (Crotty) meet and hit it off and sleep together. The problem? They're both married with six children between them. Butoryak describes the characters "having a one-night stand, which turns into 25 years of one-night stands." She clarified that "every year, they come back and for 24 hours, they have one day together every year. And they're both in happy marriages. But they just have a really deep connection. They talk about their spouses, they talk about their kids. So what starts out to be just a sexual affair really turns into something much deeper."

The story joins the characters in five-year increments, each of them weaving in and out of each other's lives. While George and Doris diverge ideologically over the years, they ultimately care about each other very much. The crux of the story is how they deal with the moral conflict of what they've done without denying how they feel. 

Reception at 6 p.m.; show at 7:30 p.m. // PACA, 1505 State St., Second Floor (elevator operator on staff all evening) // $45 // Mature themes // Tickets and info: tickets.eriereader.com