Brighton Beach Memoirs

Gratuitous Violins rating: **** out of ****

Way back on July 4, 2008, I wrote a blog post wishing Neil Simon a happy birthday and bemoaning the fact that while I'd seen most of the movie versions of his plays, I'd never seen one on stage.

Well, the theatre gods heard my prayers.

When it was announced that not one but two Simon revivals would open on Broadway this fall, with Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound playing in repertory, I was beside myself with anticipation.

Then I started to worry. Would the plays be too Jewish? Would they be Jewish enough? Would they seem outdated? Would Noah Robbins as Simon's alter ego Eugene Morris Jerome be as good as I imagined Matthew Broderick was in his Tony-winning performance in the original Brighton Beach Memoirs?

I'm happy to report that all of my anxiety was for naught.

Brighton Beach Memoirs, set in the late 1930s, is a semi-autobiographical account of the playwright's Brooklyn childhood. The Jerome family - Eugene, his older brother Stan, and parents Jack and Kate, share their home with Kate's widowed sister Blanche and her daughters, Laurie and Nora.

Just as director David Cromer did with Our Town off-Broadway, he brilliantly strips this play down to its essence: a warm, humorous portrait of a family scraping to get by during the Great Depression. They're absolutely Jewish but you don't have to be to appreciate their struggles, their humor and their hopes and fears.

Robbins is remarkable as the 15-year-old Eugene, obsessed with baseball and discovering girls, taking careful notes about his family in his journal for the play he hopes to write someday - if he doesn't play for the Yankees. He makes Simon's quips sound so natural. What a confident, winning performance from a 19-year-old in his Broadway debut.

Dennis Boutsikaris is wonderful as Jack Jerome, a gentle, understanding man who's in danger of wearing himself out providing for the seven people living under his roof.

And I loved Laurie Metcalf as Kate, who's not spouting one-liners but getting at the real emotion contained in those lines. She is an awesome Jewish mother. It's a role that would be so easy to overplay but Metcalf gets to the strength behind the stereotype.

As Blanche, Jessica Hecht has her hands full raising her two daughters, the rebellious teenager Nora, played by Alexandra Socha, and the sweet but sickly Laurie, played by Grace Bea Lawrence, while trying not to be a burden on her sister's family.

Some of my favorite scenes take place in the tiny second-floor bedroom Eugene shares with Santino Fontana's Stanley. They argue and confide in each other and clearly love each other. Listening to Stanley explain a thing or two about the facts of life to his little brother - and watching Eugene's reaction - is hysterical.

But as funny as this play is, it's also quite serious and moving at times. We know war is looming and everything that means for a Jewish family one generation removed from the old country. Under Cromer's direction, the talented cast adjusts seamlessly as emotions change.

Designer John Lee Beatty crams a lot into his set. I sat in the left orchestra, a few rows from the stage, which is a great vantage point for Eugene and Stanley's bedroom and the front door. While the dining room table is stage right, the cast did a good enough job of projecting that I didn't feel left out during the dinner scene.

Now, I'm even more excited to see Broadway Bound, which takes place a decade later. The cast includes Boutsikaris, Metcalf, Fontana and Hecht but with Josh Grisetti as the adult Eugene. Previews begin Nov. 18 and this time, I'm not nervous at all because I know it's in great hands.

My must-see fall shows, Broadway edition

Maybe it's the Obama Effect or just a coincidence but there are five shows opening on Broadway this fall that deal with the subject of race in America - musicals Ragtime, Memphis and Finian's Rainbow and plays Superior Donuts and Race.

Three of them - a revival of Ragtime and two new plays, Tracy Letts' Superior Donuts and David Mamet's Race - are among the shows I'm most looking forward to seeing as the 2009-2010 Broadway season gets under way.

Why those three? Well, I've always been interested in 20th century American history, not so much from the perspective of momentous events but from a social and cultural angle - where we come from and how we get along.

Ragtime, based on E.L. Doctorow's novel, with a score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, focuses on three families - African-American, Jewish immigrant and WASP - at the turn of the century. I loved the book and from listening to the music, I think it does a wonderful job of telling those intertwined stories.

Superior Donuts, fresh from the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, is a contemporary look at a diverse, changing Chicago neighborhood. After seeing so many terrific Chicago actors in August: Osage County, I'm eager for more, including Jon Michael Hill, who's making his Broadway debut. He's won raves for his performance as a teenager who works in a doughnut shop owned by Michael McKean. (From Spinal Tap! Laverne & Shirley!)

And Race - well, no doubt Mamet will have something interesting and incendiary to say. Plus, of all the big-name movie and tv actors who'll be treading the boards this fall, it has the one I'm most excited about - Richard Thomas. Yes, I realize James Spader is in it, and David Alan Grier and Kerry Washington. But c'mon, The Waltons! I grew up pre-VCR, pre-cable. Network tv was all I had. 'Nuff said.

I'm also pretty pumped about seeing A Steady Rain. Yes, I want to see how Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig will transform themselves into Chicago cops in Keith Huff's two-hander play. But no doubt about it, I'm also looking forward to staring dreamily at Hugh Jackman for 90 uninterrupted minutes. (Although the Playbill, which features their melded faces, is creepy beyond words.)

And I simply cannot miss the revivals of two Neil Simon plays, Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound. I'm really looking foward to seeing what Chicagoan David Cromer, who directed the amazing Our Town, will do with them.

The plays are thinly veiled accounts of Simon's youth growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s and '40s. Which means, I know, creaky, self-deprecating Jewish humor. What can I say? Lines like this truly make me laugh:

"I hate my name - Eugene Morris Jerome. How am I ever gonna to play for the Yankees with a name like that? All the best Yankees are Italian. My mother makes spaghetti with ketchup. What chance to I have?"

And this:

"And when they saw the Statue of Liberty they started to cry. The women wailing and the men shaking and everyone praying. And you want to know why, because they took one look at that statue and said, 'That's not a Jewish woman, we're gonna have problems again.' ''

Oy, I can't wait!

The Neil Simon press non-event

So the promised tweets from today's press event for Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound had me glued to my Twitter account. Sadly they turned out to be less than riveting.

Hey Boneau/Bryan-Brown, if you're going alert twitterdom to "Make sure you follow us this afternoon as we tweet live from The Neil Simon Plays press event starting around 6ish," please try to have something more interesting to say than this:

1.) The photogs are ready for the cast.
2.) Does Neil Simon have a caricature at Sardi's? If not, he should.
3.) They did readings of both plays today. That's a lot of Simon.
4.) Neil Simon is here. Surprise! (And that was a re-tweet from someone else.)
5.) David Cromer says he dresses from the "rumpled genius" line of clothing.
6.) Cromer said the key to these plays is only casting the perfect actors in each part.

No. 5 is kind of funny. As for the rest, meh!

That's okay, I'm still psyched about the revival of these plays, which tell the story of a Jewish family in Brooklyn in the 1930s and '40s and are a thinly veiled account of Simon's life and career.

And of course I can't stay mad for long. Just look at the picture: Noah Robbins, who plays Simon's alter ego Eugene Morris Jerome in Brighton Beach Memoirs, Neil Simon himself, Josh Grisetti, who plays Eugene in Broadway Bound and director David Cromer, of the amazing Our Town off-Broadway.

I'm a little verklempt.

The first preview of Brighton Beach Memoirs is Oct. 2 and it opens Oct. 25. Broadway Bound previews begin Nov. 18 and it opens Dec. 2. They'll play in repertory at the Nederlander Theatre. Preview tickets are only $50 if you order by Sept. 6.