Lost in Yonkers
Lost in Yonkers
Curtain Up
Elyse Sommer
You're not going to like the tyranical, stingy Grandma Kurnitz. Eddie, Jay and Arty's father, leaves them with their unwelcoming grandmother in order to pay off the debt incurred during their recently deceased mother's final illness. It's a joyless home but the boys are endearing survivors and to also grab you by the heartstrings there's love-starved Aunt Bella whose head is, as Jay observes is "closed for repairs."
Like the Brighton Beach plays, Lost in Yonkers is autobiographical However, the earlier plays were nostalgia smothered comedies, while Yonkers is a serious drama with just enough Simonisms to let in some light.
But why Lost in Yonkers by TACT? After all, the company's declared mission is to mount neglected plays and Neil Simon made his reputation as a virtual Broadway hit machine. Lost in Yonkers, while not his most successful play, ran for 780 performances at the Richard Rodgers Theater and won a Pulitzer.
Its Broadway and prize winning history notwithstanding, Yonkers has never been revived on Broadway. You see, even Neil Simon's best plays have ceased being sure-fire hits. The last attempt to reignite his box office appeal, an in repertory revival of Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound was a dismal failure.
All this considered, Lost in Yonkers does indeed fit TACT's mission, not only to give audiences a chance to see neglected plays but to use their modestly sized home on Theater Row to give them a freshly considered staging. Besides, assembling a fine cast, director Jenn Thompson, has intensified and broadened the play's emotional nuances, thanks to some Simon-authorized changes and John McDermott's set that cannily has a wider world overarching Grandma Kurnitz's narrow world
In the original production the boys functioned mostly as narrative catalysts for the conflict between the needy Bella and the harsh, sour faced but equally damaged mother. Now the boys no longer seem to be pushing so hard to merge the big drama of an emotionally scarred mother passing her wounds on to her children. Instead their sibling dynamic and coming of age (and coming to understand and deal with the adults around them) is tightly integrated with the entire grandma-damaged ensemble.
As the boys serving what they view as a year-long sentence in the prison-like Yonkers apartment, Matthew Gumley as Jay and Russell Posner as Arty prove to be a winning combination of smart alecky wit, fearfulness and wide-eyed naivete. When Uncle Louie (Alec Beard playing this gangster on the run as an aptly slick but not so smart Humphrey Bogart guy) comes on the scene, the boys are intrigued by his "moxie." Ultimately, and most satisfyingly, however, it's Jay who has more moxie and the scene when he stands up to Louie is one of the evening's highlights.
Vital as the boys are to the drama, the axis around which everything pivots is the cane-wielding Grandma. Cynthia Harris is every bit the unsmiling, mostly silent and formidable ruler of everything that goes on in the apartment, not to mention in the unseen candy storey below where, as one character says, she'd know "if salt was missing from a pretzel."
As for the childlike 35-year-old Bella, Finnerty Steeves wins our affection and wish for her to get out from beneath her mother's life-smothering domination. Dominic Comperatore and Stephanie Cozart have the least stage time; he as Eddie, Jay and Artys bereaved and frazzled father and she as Gert, the asthmatic daughter who still can't breathe in her mother's presence. But both ably round out this family portrait of a family trying to survive despite unhealable wounds.
As John McDermott's single set puts us up close, almost right inside, this sterile home, so Toby Jaguaralgya's incidental music contributes to the sense of two worlds undergoing great changes. David Toser's costumes are right on the mark, from the Hoover aprons to Bella's pink chenille robe.
I'll admit, that even though I'm not given to easy tears, my eyes were moist by the time Jay and Arty's period of being abandoned to the care of their steely grandmother ended. Maybe, this is the play they should have chosen to bring Neil Simon back to Broadway three years ago. But then again, that means we wouldn't be seeing this excellent up close and freshly focused production from TACT. At any rate, I'd be happy to pull out the convertible in my spare room for a visit from this Jay and Artie any day.