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Selected Shorts · Symphony Space

Romance of the Summer

·1 hr·5 clips
Aminta asks her lover for a bathing suit, sparking a surreal summer fantasy in their Rome apartment.
Summer gets a warm welcome, but not a syrupy one. Meg Wolitzer opens with long days, beach reading, watermelon seeds, and the ice cream truck's bell, then keeps the glow just a little crooked. Her camp memory is homesickness, not freedom: her sister, a hill, and a self-declared Homesick Club. Hugh Dancy, Dennis O'Hare, and Retta are introduced as the company for this summer hour of fiction. Then the mood tilts. A performed voice makes staying indoors sound almost moral, with coats worn for the cat and food kept safely under a roof. Picnics become oddly suspicious. Bus benches, statues, curbs, baskets, paper plates, and flies all end up in the evidence pile. Cookouts are treated with real standards, especially when potato salad depends on trust and planning, not some loose workplace assignment. The backyard invitation narrows into a test of balance, trash-adjacent cement, homemade tabbouleh, and forced cheer outside. Catalogs offer softer fantasies. The sharpness comes from watching summer pleasures run into comfort, race, appetite, and private daydreams. Wolitzer returns quietly for the credits, with the Getty Center recordings, public support, theme music, Symphony Space, and the production team named without pulling focus from the story.

As heard by us

A summer program that finds wit in memory, seasonal ritual, and the small absurdities of hot weather.

Selected Shorts settles into a summer mood without pushing too hard for laughs. Meg Wolitzer frames the hour with an easy touch, and the stories move through camp memories, ice cream trucks, beach reading, patio talk, and the awkward business of staying indoors while summer…

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Why you'd press play

For when summer makes your apartment feel like the punch line.

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