Lost in Yonkers
In Neil Simon's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, young Jay and Arty Kurnitz move in with their grandmother, a Germanic glacier who runs her walk-up apartment with Hitlerian control. But what promises to be a battle between wisecracking kids and a cane-wielding battle-ax instead focuses on a sad, in some ways tragic couple: Grandma K and her 35-year-old, mentally challenged daughter Bella, whose mind, a boy quips, "is closed for repairs." In the Old Globe production, Judy Kaye doesn't need the persistently melodramatic effects - lights suddenly dimming, her cane thumping the ground - to accompany the grandmother's entrances, since Kaye makes her an iron gray cold front set to storm on all opposition, including Jennifer Regan's Bella, a grown woman trapped in a child's mind. Stephen Kaplan and Austyn Myers play the young brothers with impressive, minimalist choices. Jeffrey M. Bender's Louie, a mob "henchman," has been a survivor, up to now. Amanda Naughton and Spencer Rowe contribute in minor roles. And Alejo Vietti's costumes evoke the period - 1942 - and the family's strapped economic status. [Note: due to popular demand, the Old Globe Theatre has extended the run of this show]
Worth a try.
When
Ongoing until Sunday, March 7, 2010
Hours
| Sundays, 2pm & 7pm |
| Tuesdays, 7pm |
| Wednesdays, 7pm |
| Thursdays, 8pm |
| Fridays, 8pm |
| Saturdays, 2pm & 8pm |