Theater: Time's Toll

SUMMER by Hugh Leonard

As a dramatist, Ireland's Hugh Leonard tracks the minute hand of life. As the clock ticks, his characters fill the passing hour with the tang of Irish talk and freshets of Irish humor, with the surge of sex and the ache of love, with religious piety and tipsy poetry. Leonard's people feel the sting of remorse, offer the balm of compassion, and embrace the abiding little ironies of the condition called human.

Death, of course, is life's largest irony. Mortality tolled through Leonard's best-known play, "Da "; in Summer it rustles through the sunlit grass on a verdant hilltop...