Even though A. R. Gurney, Jr.'s "What I Did Last Summer" is non-vintage Gurney and doesn't take off on its own, there is considerable pleasure in it. The play … is set in a beach resort on Lake Erie during the final summer of the Second World War, and it tells the story (among several stories) of a fourteen-year-old boy named Charlie—the "I" of the title—who escapes the resort, his family, and his summer Latin homework to become the hired boy and eventually the disciple of an elderly art teacher named Anna Trumbull, herself a former summer colonial. (p. 104)

In form, "What I Did" is composed of small, self-contained incidents, as were such vintage Gurney plays as "The Dining Room" and "Scenes from American Life," and most of the incidents are enertaining and believable enough. One trouble may lie (I'm not sure of this myself) in...