Where have all the Neil Simon fans gone?

I can't believe it. I saw the Broadway revival of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs a week ago tonight and now, a provisional closing notice has been posted for Sunday. Its companion, Broadway Bound, which I was so looking forward to seeing, has been canceled. I feel like crying.

Why can't a play with so much humor and heart, with a terrific cast, find an audience? I mean, newcomer Noah Robbins is hilarious and sweet as Simon's teenage alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome. And Laurie Metcalf exudes so much strength in a memorable performance as his mother, Kate.

Last week, Brighton Beach Memoirs could fill just 61 percent of the 1,200 seats at the Nederlander Theatre, with an average paid admission of only $21. 32. With lackluster ticket sales, the producers simply couldn't justify spending any more money, a source told The New York Times.

The original production opened in 1983 and ran for three years, making a star out of Matthew Broderick, who garnered a Tony award. What happened this time?

Are fans of Neil Simon simply dying out and not being replaced, as David Edelstein implies in New York magazine? Edelstein admits that Simon's plays "connected with their audience on a level that theater almost never does anymore" but questions whether they can be made to seem fresh or new.

I disagree. I think director David Cromer brought a level of depth and understanding to Brighton Beach Memoirs that I wasn't expecting. The story of a struggling Jewish family during the Depression seemed so relevant. It wasn't at all an exercise in nostalgia. (And as I said in my review, you didn't have to be Jewish to relate.)

According to the most recent statistics from the League of American Theatre Producers, tourists purchased about 65 percent of the nearly 12.3 million tickets sold to Broadway shows. And foreign tourists comprised more than 15 percent of attendees.

That's great for the New York City economy but not so good for those of us who love plays and don't care whether or not there's a famous face in the cast.

President and Mrs. Obama's trip to see Joe Turner's Come and Gone in the spring is the exception to the rule - it seems like most people come to Broadway these days to see a musical or someone they recognize from movies or television.

I guess the issue is closer to what producer David Richenthal told The New York Times earlier in the week about casting Abigail Breslin as Helen Keller in a Broadway revival of The Miracle Worker:

“It’s simply naïve to think that in this day and age, you’ll be able to sell tickets to a play revival solely on the potential of the production to be a great show or on the potential for an unknown actress to give a breakthrough performance. I would consider it financially irresponsible to approach a major revival without making a serious effort to get a star.”

Hey, I'm not knocking it. Those tourists pay salaries and keep thousands of small businesses afloat. I love seeing musicals and big stars, too. But we're pretty close to the point where Broadway consists of musicals and limited runs of plays with celebrities.

As a fan of 20th century American drama who always hopes to discover a great performance by an actor who's unknown to me, that makes me sad.

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.

Our Town

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

In December, Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones wrote in his Theater Loop blog about the selection of director David Cromer as Theater Chicagoan of the Year. He mentioned that in May, Cromer had directed an "astonishing" production of Our Town.

Our Town astonishing? Really? That got my attention.

I found the review that Jones wrote and it was one of the most enthusiastic I've ever read. He used words like "astounding" and "brilliantly revisionist" in describing the performance, put on in a cramped basement by a small company called The Hypocrites.

I'd read Thornton Wilder's play in high school and I saw a good production in 2007 at Trinity Repertory Company. But I couldn't even begin to imagine what Cromer had done to elicit this kind of praise. I knew that if Our Town ever came to New York, I wanted to see it.

Well, last week I had a chance to make my way down to the Barrow Street Theatre in Greenwich Village for Our Town. And it was worth the trip because Jones' rave review was right on target. Seeing new life breathed into a classic American play is a wonderful experience.

First, Barrow Street, located in a community center, fits this production so well. The theatre seats about 200 people and isn't much bigger than some living rooms I've been in. The play takes place literally right in front of the audience. And in keeping with Wilder's instructions, there's almost no scenery or props.

It's easy to think of Our Town, written in in 1938 and set in the first decade of the 20th century in the fictional town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, as a quaint period piece. You could call it an an elegy to a small-town America that no longer exists.

Well, maybe the milkman doesn't bring the milk by horse-drawn wagon anymore. But Cromer has made the play contemporary and relevant. For the first time I thought, it could be taking place today. Watching the daily life of Our Town's residents unfold didn't seem all that distant.

Plus, as the stage manager who narrates Our Town, Cromer gives one of the best performances I've ever seen - completely natural and unaffected.

At the center of Our Town is the story of Emily Webb, the newspaper editor's daughter, and George Gibbs, the doctor's son. As Emily and George, Jennifer Grace and James McMenamin truly embody the awkwardness of teenagers.

They give the play its timeless quality - no matter how much things change, kids are still kids. You have dreams and insecurities. You fall in love. Eventually, you have to confront adulthood in all of its joy and heartache and regrets. And Grace does an especially fine job appearing first little girlish, then a teenager, and finally, a young woman.

I've seen so many play revivals over the past few years where it seemed like there was nothing new to say and the work showed its age. But this was different. It was so satisfying and it made me look at the play in a different way.

I always felt that the third and final act of Our Town seemed a little tacked on. But Cromer makes a decision that made me gasp. It was unexpected, yet loyal to the theme of the play, about what we should cherish in life. It was visceral and vivid and reminded me so much of people in my own life that I got choked up.

I was already pretty excited about the two Neil Simon revivals that Cromer will direct on Broadway this fall - Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound. After Our Town, I just cannot wait to see what he does with them.

Our Town has now been extended through Jan. 31, 2010, and Cromer will be with it through Aug. 16, when he leaves to start rehearsals on the Neil Simon plays.