Some Brighton Beach memories

When Brighton Beach Memoirs closed on Broadway a week after it opened, Noah Robbins, who was so appealing as Eugene Morris Jerome, learned the hard way that show business is first of all a business.

But the 19-year-old from Maryland, whose biggest role prior to this was Max Bialystock in high school in The Producers, sounds philosophical about the experience.

At least, he tells Robert Siegel of National Public Radio, he had a chance to perform, unlike some of the cast of the companion play, Broadway Bound, which never started previews.

Plus, after getting some pretty good reviews he's less of an unknown. And now he really knows what it feels like to be a struggling actor. I thought this answer was cute, too.

Robert Siegel: "And what is the wisdom? What is the thing that you never would have expected about being in a Broadway show that you now know?"

Noah Robbins: "It's not as different from high school as I thought. The theaters are better, the casts are better. But there was sort of the same amount of nervousness for high school as I had for Broadway and that was something that I would have never expected."

I had a chance to meet Robbins after seeing Brighton Beach Memoirs and he's a very polite, soft-spoken young man. In fact, he looked and sounded so unlike the wisecracking Eugene I was even more impressed with his performance. (Kudos to hair and wig designer Tom Watson and costume designer Jane Greenwood, too.)

Here's a clip from the play. As Brighton Beach's narrator a lot rests on the shoulders of the actor portraying Eugene. It's a big responsibility for someone barely out of high school and making his Broadway debut and Robbins was terrific.

Robbins will enroll at Columbia University in the fall - just a little farther up Broadway, as Siegel notes. Hopefully we'll see him on stage again soon - next time in a production with a better business plan.

Bravo, Noah Robbins

I know, it's time to say goodbye to Brighton Beach Memoirs and let this wonderfully funny, poignant revival pass into history with its final performance today.

Before the curtain comes down, here's a clip of the delightful Noah Robbins making his Broadway debut as playwright Neil Simon's alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome:



It's so sad when a show you love closes suddenly and much, much too soon. To the cast and creative team, thank-you for an evening of theatre that I'll always cherish.

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.

Broadway's youth movement

Tonight was the first preview for a show I'm especially excited about seeing - the Broadway revival of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs. It'll play in repertory with Broadway Bound, which begins previews Nov. 18.

Set in Brooklyn in 1937, the play is the thinly veiled story of Simon's own childhood. It opened on Broadway on March 27, 1983, and featured 21-year-old Matthew Broderick in a Tony-winning performance as Simon's alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome.

Noah Robbins, a Washington, D.C.-area teenager, steps into Broderick's shoes. He was a senior at Georgetown Day School when his selection was announced in May.

According to Robbins' biography, he got his start at age 11 as a singing, dancing clown at the Kennedy Center and, among his other roles, he's appeared as Max Bialystock in his high school's production of The Producers.

Thinking about Robbins made me realize that there's a trio of actors in their late teens and early 20s making their Broadway debuts this fall: Robbins, Jon Michael Hill, 24, in the play Superior Donuts and later this month, Stephanie Umoh, a 2008 Boston Conservatory graduate, in the revival of the musical Ragtime.

What's amazing about all three is that they're not playing minor characters - they have substantial roles. And none of them comes to New York with an incredible amount of stage experience. It's not like they've been in a lot of movies or tv, either.

(Josh Grisetti, who'll play Eugene in Broadway Bound, is also making his Broadway debut but he has a much longer list of credits.)

Not that any of the three is coming in cold - Hill is a Steppenwolf ensemble member and Umoh has done shows, including Ragtime, with Boston-area theatre companies.

But having to carry a substantial part of a Broadway production is still a pretty major accomplishment - imagine pitching for the Yankees at 18 or 20. It must be incredibly thrilling and nerve-wracking.

Superior Donuts opened on Thursday and Hill received great reviews, like this from The New York Times: "Played with boundless, buoyant charm by Mr. Hill, Franco is the briskly humming generator of the play’s abundant laughs."

We still have to see how Robbins and Umoh do. Brighton Beach Memoirs opens Oct. 25. Ragtime begins previews on Oct. 23 and opens Nov. 15.

But on top of all the other reasons to be excited about this season on Broadway, the fact that I have a chance to see three young performers who may very well be on the cusp of stardom is certainly a big one.

Yes, bragging rights, that's what I'm after!