[Summer] is less tightly focused, less dramaturgically clever, less sentimentally charming than Leonard's other play, Da…. But Summer has gentle virtues of its own.

A group of middle-aged people sit on the grass, thinking long, wistful thoughts about their lives, and a couple of young ones voice their hopes for the future: Summer has this in common with the second act of The Cherry Orchard. But in Leonard's Ireland there is no sound of a far-off breaking string to indicate the end of an old way of life and the beginning of a new one. His characters, like Chekhov's in Uncle Vanya rather than The Cherry Orchard, are not swept up in social change but trapped in aimlessness and mediocrity. (p. 386)

Summer is an Irish play that does not harp upon its Irishness. Its themes are Chekhov's themes: the baffling way in which life fails to make good...