Lost in Yonkers: Found with great heart and wit in Burlington
Neil Simon is the only living
playwright with a theatre named after him, and for good reason. Styled a
great comic writer, Simon’s straight plays almost never follow
standard, comic structure. Even though his works reflect standard moral
reference, his use of structure is anything but standard. He plays in
the teeth and up the wazoo of the structure he’s chosen. We are grateful
for it. Without this, we would not have his rib-busting tragedies, or,
in this case, his severely funny, dangerous and touching melodramas.
Lost in Yonkers is the
story of teenage brothers Jay and Arty Kurnitz, presented to us fully
realized and with solid craft by Joe Vaccaro and Bryce Powell
respectively. Their interplay was spot-on. They are teenagers in a world
whose possibilities include loveless mothers, violent deaths, orphaning
and insanity.
And they are very funny. Not for
a moment did I believe that they were anything other than teenage boys
because, well, they are. But not for a moment did I think them anything
but teenage boys in 1943 in the pressure pot of the play’s world. I
thank them both for fine performances.
Grandma Kurnitz is gifted us in stolid, Germanic precision by Celeste
Bonfanti, an actress showing herself to be most versatile and solid on
the Bridge Players’ stage. Ms. Bonfanti’s Grandma has a codger’s cold
heart. She is, at times, shockingly cruel to her children. But as the
play unfolds, Ms. Bonfanti reveals the heart beneath the crust to be just as Simon wrote it to be. . .cold steel.
We hear the pain behind the
tempering of the mettle of her heart, but the tale leads to no catharsis
for her or us. But, while we don’t see it displayed openly, Ms.
Bonfanti allows us the smallest glimpse of the mother’s heart beating
beneath the steel, the perfect dash of humanity allowing the character
to settle in our souls.
There are four others in the
dysfunctional Kurnitz family album—the sibling offspring of Grandma and
Grandpa Kurnitz. This first generation of American immigrant children
has been so spiritually and emotionally scarred by their mother’s harsh
experiences and lethal terrors that they are four flowers of injury,
each a unique blossom.
Aunt Gert, the sister who
escaped the apartment, refuses to take it in. Literally. She can’t
breathe deeply enough to finish a sentence. Midway through she runs out
of air and has to finish the thought while drawing breath in through the
words. It is painfully hilarious. Nervously, lovingly and breathlessly
played by Gabrielle Affleck, Gert embodies the good heart helpless to
influence a thing.
Uncle Louie is a thug. He wears
an expensive suit, flashes a big bank roll and insouciantly carries a
gun in a shoulder holster. Damian Muziani is such a perfect Louie that I
was shocked after the show to hear him speak in eloquent, mid-Atlantic
standard. He had me thugged and Yonkered all the way. A broadcaster and
business-owner, Mr. Muziani has been less able to commit to live
performances than he’d like. I would encourage him to return speedily
and often.
A most remarkable piece of this
presentation is the truth of the relationships drawn between the boys
and the adults. Both totally believable, Jay and Arty’s relationship
with Uncle Louie is utterly different from their relationships with
Eddie Kurnitz, Jay and Arty’s father.
Eddie, played with urgent,
nervous physicality tempered in real love by John Colona, is in
impossible straits. Newly widowered, he is in over his head in debt to
shady characters. Mr. Colona gives us a finely realized Eddie, the weak
one. He’s the one who cried even while being scolded by his mother that
big boys do not carry on so shamefully.
Mr. Colona’s Eddie explains how
such a family produced two boys who credit him so much that one wrote a
play with him as a most admirable character in it. Eddie retained his
humanity the most of all the siblings, and, therefore, has children who
stand more firmly, more solidly and more assuredly on their own feet
than their father, aunts and uncle do.
But the heart of the play comes
from Aunt Bella. Aunt Bella is mentally challenged. 35, she lives with
her mother in the Yonkers apartment where the story takes place. She
gets easily excited, easily flustered, easily enraged. And she is full
of love.
Lily K. Doyle gives us Bella on
the Bridge Players’ stage. She’s had this part on her bucket-list for a
while, and I am grateful to her for that. Her performance is moving.
Innocent though not untouched,
child-like though middle-aged, finding any reason and taking every
opportunity for bits and scratches of happiness, she is also given the
wisest and most compassionate lines in the play. Hankies appeared,
though some of us, in honor of the comedy, used our sleeves. I thank Ms. Doyle as I do the entire cast for excellent work and solid craft.
But I’ve left out a character.
The final character in this solidly inventive staging of the play is not
listed in the program. It is not a single person. It is a radio which,
covering scene changes, plays old-time radio commercials which drew
surprise and delight from the audience, many of whom sang along with the
jingles. It was a delightful addition and coverage of a normally deadly
time in a play.
The dialects across the board
were perfect. Operating totally in support of every character, this
often uneven piece of the craft gets the highest marks here. But it was
not a perfect production.
Twice it seemed the boys
stumbled over staging and the same number of times the staging seemed to
squash arbitrarily into a corner. And the radio commercials, while
charming, seemed at times to go on a bit too long.
But the mark of good craft is
the recovery. There’s not a performer who hasn’t tripped. It’s part of
the fun of live performance. And these small gaffes stopped no one on
this stage nor drained any enthusiasm for the action from the audience.
The house, fully three-quarters
full, was with the action all the way, laughing, tearing, cheering, even
calling out audible warnings at tense moments. We were theirs.
Tastily, this is a dessert
theatre. We are seated at table with coffee and tea available at will
and desserts elegantly served on trays by volunteer company members
during intermission. So we have body and soul both fed on this day.
Neil Simon’s singular gift is
identifying the gaping injuries extant in nearly all human psyches and
building all the possible humor inherent in the situation in relief over
the pain. There is nothing simple or easy about staging his plays. The
concept, the choices, the craft and the just and tasty desserts make
this production at Bridge Players an elegant investment of money and
time. You’ll exit with the knowledge that comedy is not a form or a
plot. It is a state of mind.
Lost in Yonkers
By Neil Simon
Directed by Susan Jami Paschkes
Bridge Players Theatre Company
36 E. Broad Street
Burlington, N.J.
856-303-7620
My reviews are written for STAGE Magazine
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