CurtainUp
CurtainUp
The Internet Theater Magazine of Reviews, Features, Annotated Listings
HOME PAGE

SITE GUIDE

SEARCH


REVIEWS

REVIEW ARCHIVES

ADVERTISING AT CURTAINUP

FEATURES

NEWS
Etcetera and
Short Term Listings


LISTINGS
Broadway
Off-Broadway

NYC Restaurants

BOOKS and CDs

OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
California
New Jersey
DC
Philadelphia
Elsewhere

QUOTES

TKTS

PLAYWRIGHTS' ALBUMS

LETTERS TO EDITOR

FILM

LINKS

MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
A CurtainUp Berkshire Review
Lost In Yonkers

You're not afraid to say the truth.. Dot's good. . . .You want to hear what my truth is?. . .Everything urts. Whatever it is you get good in life, you also lose something.— Grandma

I guess I'm too young to understand that. — Jay

And I'm too old to forget it. . .—Grandma
Y

Matt Gumley, Jake Giordano, Paula Jon DeRose
(Photo credit: Kevin Sprague)
Lynn Cohen

Lynn Cohen
(Photo credit: Kevin Sprague)
Jenn Thompson's production of Neil Simon's Pulitzer Prize winning Lost In Yonkers for TACT (The Actors Company Theatre) was one of the highlights of my 2012 season of Off-Broadway plays. Despite Simon's long and super successful career that includes a Broadway theater named for him Lost In Yonkers was never revived on Broadway. And the devastatingly cool reception to a Broadway revival of his Brighton Beach plays, made a Broadway revival of Yonkers unlikely, and TACT taking it on at it's small off-Broadway home most welcome.

The TACT production was more than just a revival, but an exciting new look with a new focus and some Simon-approved script alterations. The only downside was that TACT plays can't have extended runs. But Berkshire theater goers are in luck. Barrington Stage has given this beautiful, moving new look at what is probably Neil Simon's best play.

With Thompson once again at the helm, and John McDermott recreating his very fine stage design, I'm delighted to report that what was a 2012 New York season highlight, is sure to be a highlight of my Berkshire coverage this summer.

Naturally a time lapse between productions inevitably requires some changes in the performance and design team. Fortunately, John McDermott is aboard to recreate his wonderfully effective unit set design, and he is well supported by the Barrington Stage crafts team. The current cast is blessed with a wonderful new Grandma Kurnitz — Lynn Cohen. Though her accent is a bit more Polish than German and at times a bit hard on the ears, this is a rich performance this veteran actress knows how to speak worlds without saying a word.

Three of the original production's cast members are reprising their roles: Dominic Comperatore as Eddie, Stephanie Cozard in the small part of Aunt Gert, and Matt Gumley as Jay. Naturally three years tend to make big changes in a teenager and Gumley who was the same age as the 15-year-old he played in 2012 is now 18 and clearly this is his last hurrah as a child actor. Still, while he's a bit too mature looking at this point, he's a good enough actor to adjust his voice and persona quite convincingly.

As for the new cast members, all are well chosen. Jake Giordano is making an auspicious professional debut as kid borther Arty. Paula Jon DeRose's Aunt Bella tugs at your heart strings. David Christopher Wells's Uncle Louie once again makes the confrontation between him and his older nephew a show stopper.

And so, rather than repeat myself, I'm herewith reposting my review of the Off-Broadway production:

You could do a lot worse than seeing TACT/The Actors Company Theatre's revival of Neil Simon's 27th play, Lost in Yonkers (1991). You're not going to like the tyranical, stingy Grandma Kurnitz. But, you'll see in the grandsons she unwillingly takes into her home all too timely parallels to children who are today falling outside the safety net of a stable home life.

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. Grandma's domestic dictatorship includes a candy store below the apartment where a pretzel eaten rather than sold incurs her wrath. It's a joyless place 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. Jay and Arty, like the Jerome boys, are again younger versions of Simon and his brother Danny. However, their story is from a distinctly darker chapter of Neil Simon's memory book when he and his brother were farmed out to relatives during their parents' frequent marital separations.

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. At one time, one or another of his comedies was always packing in audiences whose laughter often drowned out his unfailingly funny punch lines. 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. Yet there's little or no likelihood of its making a Broadway comeback, even as revivals of plays of similar vintage show up, — to borrow a quote from Hamlet, "not as single spies but in battalions." 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 (Brighton Beach Memoirs closed almost instantly and the second play never opened).

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

The main change Mr. Simon ok'd for this production seems to be the omission of the between scenes voice-overs of the letters from the boys' father. To be honest, I don't really recall the use of this device that clearly from the Broadway production. I'm therefore sure only that I had a deeper sense of the current Jay and Arty's need to cope with the permanent loss of their mother and temporary loss of their father and home than when I originally saw the play. The absence of those voice-overs may well have emphasized these dislocated children's abandonment at a time before technology could have helped them to at least feel more connected to their distant father.

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 their Uncle Louie (Alec Beard — now David Christopher Wells— playing this gangster on the run as an aptly slick but not so smart Humphrey Bogart guy) comes on scene, the boys are intrigued by his "moxie." Ultimately, and most satisfyingly, however, it's Jay who has more moxie than his uncle 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, whose German accent has lingered along with her painful foot and the emotional scars from losing two of her children in Germany. Cynthia Harris (Now Lynn Cohn) 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. To touch her is indeed, as her touchy-feely daughter Bella puts it,"like touching steel."

As for the childlike 35-year-old Bella, Finnerty Steeves (Now Paula Jon DeRose) 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 Arty's 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 single set puts us up close, almost right inside, this sterile home without a lot of furnishings and just two openings in the black wall framing the apartment for entrances and exits, so Toby Jaguaralgya's incidental music (the curreent sound designer is Toby Algya) 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. (Jennifer Caprio's somewhat different costumes are equally apt)

I'll admit, that even though I'm not given to easy tears, my eyes were most 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.


Lost in Yonkers by Neil Simon
Directed by Jenn Thompson
Cast: Matt Gumley (Jay), Jake Giordano (Arty), Dominic Comperatore (Eddie), Paula Jon DeRose (Bella), Lynn Cohen (Grandma Kurnitz), LDavid Christopher Wells (Louie), Stephanie Cozart (Aunt Gert)
Scenic Designer: John McDermott
Costume Designer: Jennifer Caprio
Lighting Designer: Martin E. Vreeland
Sound Designer: Toby Algya
Wig/Makeup Designer: Jared Janas
Production Stage Manager: Michael Andrew Rodgers
Running Time: Approx 2 hours and 20 minutes including one intermission
Barrington Stage Boyd-Quinson Mainstage 30 Union Street, Pittsfield, MA
From July 16-August 1
Tues/Wed at 7pm; Thurs-Sat at 8pm; Sun at 5pm, Wed/Fri matinees at 2pm. Additional matinee Sat. 8/1 at 2pm.
Reviewed by Elyse Sommer on July 21st
REVIEW FEEDBACK
Highlight one of the responses below and click "copy" or"CTRL+C"
  • I agree with the review of Lost In Yonkers
  • I disagree with the review of Lost In Yonkers
  • The review made me eager to see Lost In Yonkers
Click on the address link E-mail: esommer@curtainup.com
Paste the highlighted text into the subject line (CTRL+ V):

Feel free to add detailed comments in the body of the email. . .also the names and emails of any friends to whom you'd like us to forward a copy of this review.

For a feed to reviews and features as they are posted add http://curtainupnewlinks.blogspot.com to your reader
Curtainup at Facebook . . . Curtainup at Twitter
Subscribe to our FREE email updates: E-mail: esommer@curtainup.comesommer@curtainup.com
put SUBSCRIBE CURTAINUP EMAIL UPDATE in the subject line and your full name and email address in the body of the message. If you can spare a minute, tell us how you came to CurtainUp and from what part of the country.
The New Similes Dictionary






©Copyright 2015, Elyse Sommer.
Information from this site may not be reproduced in print or online without specific permission from esommer@curtainup.com