THEATRE REVIEW:
LOST IN YONKERS

JOHN COULBOURN,
Special to TorSun
19 MAY 2012
R: 3/5

LOST IN YONKERS may not be, as some suggest, the best play Neil Simon ever wrote — although it did earn him a Pulitzer Prize — but few can argue that the beloved American playwright built the play around one of the most enduring dramatic characters he ever imagined. Few dramatic roles in the modern canon prove as demanding as LIY's Grandma Kurnitz — a character that must not only dominate the stage for the time she's on it, but before she enters it and after she leaves it, as well. To tackle the role of Grandma K, Harold Green Jewish Theatre has recruited Marion Ross (aka Happy Days' Mrs. C) in a production that opened at the St. Lawrence Centre Thursday.

Set during World War II, LOST IN YONKERS plays out in the home of Ross's Grandma Kurnitz, a home shared with her damaged daughter, Bella (Linda Kash), a perpetual child, trapped in a woman's body. And even though he fled this home and Grandma Kurnitz's iron will at the first opportunity, Grandma's grown son Eddie (David Eisner)  has, in the wake of his wife's death, brought his two young sons — Jay (Alessandro Costantini) and Arty (Jesse Shimko) — to his mother in desperation, hoping she will care for them while he takes to the road to pay bills that accrued during his wife's illness.

But time has not softened the heart of a woman who terrorized her own children, and though, at Bella's urging, the disagreeable old matriarch agrees to take the two boys into her home, she makes it clear she will not take them into her heart. They will work, as unpaid help, in the store she runs downstairs, and they will live according to her unbending rules — and not even the arrival of the boys' raffish Uncle Louie (Ari Cohen) and their troubled Aunt Gert (Sheila McCarthy) will soften her rule.

Working with actors almost all of whom are a trifle mature for their parts, director Jim Warren does his level best to set things right, maintaining a brisk, business-like pacing as the story unfolds on a serviceable set created by Sue LePage and lit by Lesley Wilkinson. But ultimately, this otherwise-accomplished director seems to think this is simply another Neil Simon comedy, when in fact, what he has on his hands is perhaps Simon's only drama — and while there are comedic overtones at play here, a successful director must focus on that drama, certain that the comedy will take care of itself.

Under his direction, the venerable Ross succeeds in offering occasional glimpses into the troubled soul of the complex Grandma Kurnitz — an embittered German Jew who traded a life of hard work and grinding poverty in Berlin for a life of hard work and grinding poverty in Yonkers. But ultimately, she fails to create a cohesive portrait of a woman who triumphs through endurance.

Kash too does some fine work, only to be undone by a comedic touch too broad by half, all of which leaves an impressive Cohen and the always watchable McCarthy to team up with Eisner's care-worn Eddie to balance two fine performances from Costantini and Shimko. Sadly, for fans of Neil Simon, this production of LOST IN YONKERS shows up on stage more than a little lost in translation.