Theater Review—

A Fine ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs,’ Beautifully Staged By Town Players

By Julie Stern

Under the guidance of veteran director Lester Colodny, The Town Players of Newtown have mounted one of the finest productions seen on the stage of The Little Theatre in years: Neil Simon’s semi-autobiographical work, Brighton Beach Memoirs. Like most of Simon’s works it is at times hilariously funny, but like his best, there is an undercore of seriousness. The humor stems from an understanding of human character, rather than mere one-liners or farcical situations, keeping the performance both moving and satisfying.

Evan Trevor Thompson shines in the lead role of 14-year-old Eugene Morris Jerome, the irrepressible hero who narrates this portrait of seven family members living in a crowded duplex apartment near Coney Island. In addition to Eugene and his older brother Stanley, their parents Kate and Jack have taken in Kate’s widowed younger sister, Blanche, and her two daughters.

The year is 1937, and while Eugene’s twin preoccupations — his newly discovered awareness of girls, and his grandiose plans for a career with the New York Yankees — provide plenty of comic fodder,  these are overshadowed by the real world issues facing the adults: the grinding poverty of the Great Depression, and the looming threat of war.  Events in Europe are particular ominous for the Jeromes, as Jews. Having emigrated to America themselves as children, Jack and Kate still have many relatives facing Nazi persecution back in Poland and Russia.

There are two universal themes beautifully treated in this play. As part of the age old conflict between generations, the children imagine the glory that can be theirs: Eugene will be a baseball player or a writer; his 16-year-old cousin Nora, who has been taking music and dance lessons, wants to leave school for a job in the chorus of a Broadway show; even Stanley, who is already laboring like his father in the garment center because his $17-a-week salary is sorely needed, has visions of making a killing as a poker player, or else joining the Army and rising to be a Sergeant.

Meanwhile, from the anxiety wracked adults, who live in perpetual fear of disaster-shaped by their personal casualties from war, illness and bankrupt employers, the answer to every dream is a resounding “No!” 

Marla Manning plays Kate as a sardonic, nagging hausfrau who expects the worst in every situation, and produces inedible meals of liver and boiled cabbage as a way of putting guilt trips on her sons.

Steve Yudelson is a gentle, stolid, ox-like Jack, who moonlights after ten hour days as a garment cutter, lugging heavy suitcases through the subways, peddling novelties to nightclubs.

Elizabeth Young is Kate’s timid younger sister Blanche, who, shattered by the early loss of her beloved husband, and the bad eyesight that makes her virtually unemployable, bucks Kate’s suspicious and angry sniping to consider a friendship with Mr Murphy from across the street — an Irishman who drinks and lives with his mother, but who is polite and has a good job as a printer.

The other, and probably more important theme to this lovingly crafted play is the resilient sense of family that ultimately holds these people together. Orphaned early, and forced to drop out of school after the eighth grade, Jack Jerome is a humble factory worker with neither aspirations nor vanity, yet it is clear just how much his children — as well as his wife and sister-in-law — trust and respect him for what they see as his honor and wisdom. 

As 19-year-old Stanley, Kellan Peavy is a mixture of swaggering truculence — as a “man of the world” doling out lessons on sex to his younger brother while at the same time desperately desiring his father’s approval, and consumed by shame for having gambled away a week’s paycheck.

As Nora Morton, Jacqueline Rowland conveys a budding young woman anxious to kick free of the confines of the apartment and the dependency on her aunt and uncle’s charity, yet she submits, however unwillingly, to their demands that she do what they had not been able to do: complete her education before going to work.

Leah Nashel gives a strong performance as her rather manipulative nine-year-old sister, who has parleyed a possible heart murmur into being excused from household responsibilities. She lies on the couch and is coddled, much to Eugene’s exasperation.

Above all, this is a story of love and loyalty, an appreciative tribute to the strong foundation a good home life has to offer. And maybe the ultimate message is summed up in Jack’s kindly advice to his older son, to the effect of “do not idolize your parents as being perfect, because if you do, you’ll end up hating yourself every time you make a mistake.”

In short, this is a fine play, beautifully staged and definitely one you should go to see. My only warning is that while teens should love it, some extensive brotherly conversations about masturbation might make it embarrassing for them to see it with their elders.

(Performances continue weekends until July 28 at The Little Theatre, 18 Orchard Hill Road in Newtown.

See the Enjoy Calendar, in print and online, for curtain, ticket and other details.)