Chagrin Valley Little Theatre

The Seven Year Itch by George Axelrod

Performance Dates & Tickets

About the Play

Oh, do you feel the breeze from the subway? Isn't it delicious?

Directed by Barbara L. Rhoades

Publishing exec Richard Sherman has sent his wife and son to Maine for the Summer to escape the sweltering New York heat. While reading a book his company is going to publish about the "7-Year Itch" (which claims a significant proportion of men have extra-marital affairs after seven years of marriage), Richard meets a nameless 22-year-old blonde television model, who is renting the apartment upstairs. Richard invites the girl downstairs for a drink, which sets his lonely and wild imagination into a spin, imagining his wife carrying on in Maine with their hunky neighbor. He also finds himself plagued by silly fantasies of seduction, and horrible thoughts of his wife catching him with the young lady. The Seven Year Itch was a Broadway smash in 1952, and the 20th Century Fox film adaptation, starring the iconic Marilyn Monroe as the young model, was one of the biggest box office hits of 1955.

About the Playwright

George Axelrod (d. 2003) was an American screenwriter, producer, playwright and film director who wrote often witty and always acute examinations of American social mores that produced several superior films of the 1950s and 60s. Axelrod wrote scripts for radio programs, including "The Shadow," "Midnight" and "Grand Ole Opry," eventually branching into television. He said he contributed to or collaborated on more than 400 TV and radio scripts, and wrote for a number of top comedians, including Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Axelrod was one of the best paid writers in Hollywood, and he was nominated for an Academy Award for his 1961 adaptation of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. He was also highly regarded for his adaptation of Richard Condon's novel for director John Frankenheimer's classic Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962).  After a decade hiatus, Axelrod also provided the screenplay for the 1979 remake of The Lady Vanishes.