Revival Gets the Theatre Palisades Treatment
‘Lost in Yonkers’ debuted on Broadway in 1991 when Neil Simon was at the height of his powers as America’s premier playwright. A movie adaptation by Martha Coolidge, starring Mercedes Ruehl and Richard Dreyfuss, quickly followed. Directed by Sherman Wayne and produced by Martha Hunter and Pat Perkins, Theatre Palisades’ production of ‘Yonkers’ proves, if anything, that the Simon play is worth reviving. This local version opened Friday night. Set during World War II, ‘Yonkers” premise is simple: teen brothers Jay (Jason Lockhart) and Arty (Joel Rosenthal) are shipped out (very reluctantly) to live for 10 months with their batty relatives when dad Eddie Kurnitz (John Clement) must take out-of-state work to raise $9,000, which he owes to loan sharks who will surely kill him if he does not repay. Eddie, as it turns out, was in a pinch”the money he had borrowed for a failed attempt to save the life of Jay and Arty’s sick mother. ‘Right now, I’d go into debt again just to eat an onion roll,’ says a homesick Eddie as he travels through the Deep South to raise the $9,000 by selling scrap iron to factories. Unfortunately for Jay and Arty, their fate is ostensibly worse than Eddie’s as they must shack up with their intimidating Grandma Kurnitz (Marilyn Berney) and her loyal daughter, the daffy Aunt Bella (Rebecca Silberman), who is 35 and suffers from arrested development due to a childhood bout with Scarlet Fever. Also in the picture is Bella’s anxiety-ridden sister Gert (Chrissy Cawley). ‘We have to stay here to save Pop’s life!’ Jay rationalizes regarding his Yonkers hell. Living with Grandma Kurnitz is no picnic for anyone. ‘Her eyes were like two district attorneys,’ says Kurnitz’s other son, the shady Uncle Louie (Brian Robert Harris), as he describes the one person more terrifying than any of the underworld characters he’s become mixed up with. ‘He’s amazing,’ Arty exclaims as he observes Uncle Louie’s theatrics. ‘It’s like having a James Cagney movie in your house!’ Even though this play won the Pulitzer Prize, ‘Lost in Yonkers’ is comfort-food Simon”a quasi-autobiographical work on a par with ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs,’ ‘Biloxi Blues’ and ‘Broadway Bound.’ His ‘Yonkers’ is a bowl of chicken soup for the soul. With a funny bone floating in it. Even though you may not choke yourself laughing on it, this concoction will certainly warm you up. While Lockhart solidly carries the bulk of the play as the elder brother, Rosenthal, the youngest actor, appears green in places, struggling to maintain his New York accent. But the sold-out opening-night crowd clearly adored both young men. Berney as callous Grandma Kurnitz, and Clement and Harris, as the weak, well-intentioned single father and the ridiculous mug, respectively, deliver the stand-out performances. Silberman also does a nice turn as the ditzy Bella, and Cawley mines laughs from the play’s smallest, least fleshed-out role. In Act Two, the dramatic subtext at the play’s core rises to the surface, and that’s when Silberman shines most, as we witness Grandma Kurnitz’s long-obedient golem Bella rage against her colder-than-clay creator. We also learn how the horrors of the Old Country have hardened Grandma. This point of the play is where all of the character development pays off effectively. Costume designer June Lissandrello and Wayne’s set design effectively steeps the visuals in the Forties. The props team makes one minor misstep: surely they could have done some dollar-bin diving for an older, more authentic-looking period comic book for Arty to read. For variety’s sake, one wonders whether Theatre Palisades should have staged this play hot on the heels of another dysfunctional immigrant-family comedy, ‘You Can’t Take It With You?’ Both ensemble pieces are set during a world war and feature a household of eccentric ethnic characters. At the ‘Yonkers’ wrap party, Wayne informed the Palisadian-Post that the production company had no choice but to move up ‘Yonkers’ in the season’s schedule to fill a hole after the rights to stage ‘Don’t Dress for Dinner’ evaporated following the success of Marc Camoletti’s other hit revival, ‘Boeing Boeing.’ Less farcical than ‘You Can’t Take it With You,’ ‘Lost in Yonkers’ provides stronger material for the actors to chew on. Courtesy of Theatre Palisades, family feuds are back: somebody notify Richard Dawson! ‘Lost in Yonkers’ runs weekends through February 15 at the Pierson Playhouse, 941 Temescal Canyon Rd. Fridays and Sundays, $16, adults; seniors and students, $14; Saturdays”Adults, $18; seniors and students, $16. Tickets: (310) 454-1970; or visit www.TheatrePalisades.org.
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