The Seven Year Itch at The Vortex Theatre

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2. The Seven Year Itch

Straight out of the Mad Men era comes this lighthearted look at marital infidelity, viewed through the lens of 1950s morality. Richard Sherman is alone in his apartment, with his wife and child away for the summer. When a tomato plant crashes onto his terrace from the apartment above, the jarring experience has a strange effect: He begins to see his seven-year marriage as unexciting and suddenly itches to exercise his libido. Inviting the attractive upstairs neighbor down for a drink, Sherman undergoes a soul struggle of hilarious proportions as he contemplates seduction.

Axelrod's original play was a Broadway hit, and portrayed extramarital intimacy far more boldly than the 1955 movie version starring Tom Ewell and Marilyn Monroe. The film censors of that era banned key plot elements deemed indecent, though the poster image of Monroe's white dress billowing over a New York city subway grate survived to become one of the great icons of American cinema.

Authors

• George Axelrod