(NOTE: ALL REVIEWS ARE ALWAYS 5 STARS--I don't believe in the reduction of an work of art into a quick label, so regardless of my opinion I give 5 stars because Examiner.com requires a "star" rating.)
The Masquers’ production of BROADWAY BOUND by Neil Simon as directed by Phoebe Moyer is neat and squared away, with a cast that all emulate a proper New York Jewish accent. The set design is set at right angles and is picture perfect for post-WW2 Brooklyn down to the wainscoting, velveteen armchairs with antimacassars, Zenith console radio, and family portraits. The cast is talented and speaks their lines flawlessly with no waste of time for extraneous pauses.
But there is something missing: Comedy. Laughs. Hyoo-mah. Of this, there is bupkis, or at least very little.
And now it’s time to say a word about comedy; we begin by recounting that tale of the Great Old Actor (Edmund Kean or Edmund Gwenn or someone) who we find lying on his deathbed. A visitor approaches the actor’s bedside, and says sympathetically, “This must be very hard for you”. The actor lifts his head, smiles weakly, and disagrees, saying, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.”
Harder to teach: you understand it, you grow up in it, you got a knack for it, for the rhythms and the slow take and where to pause…or, well, maybe, you don’t.
Jews, like African-Americans, Irish, any downtrodden people, used comedy as a release-valve and analgesic. Two thousand years of oppression breeds a sense of irony at the tragedy of the situation.
In 1946, many Jews were convinced that their God had failed: Six Million gone in the Camps, the dream of One World of Workers, to which many Jews had subscribed, dissolved in the totalitarianism of Stalin, and the British and Arabs still ruled what would be Israel. A giggle or a Borsht-belt guffaw provided some insulation from the icy bite of reality.
Charlie Chaplain noted the necessity to find the pain when doing comedy: “Take your pain and play with it.” For comedy, someone noted, you take tragedy and turn it two clicks to the right. By this formula, Neil Simon is Arthur Miller played two clicks to the right. Regrettably, this production never makes it off due north, and it’s very chilly.
Neil Simon’s work is an overdone oeuvre of the community theatre repertoire—BROADWAY BOUND in particular— and only an extraordinary production could garner other than a nod and a yawn. Even New York, New York couldn’t handle another revival: two years ago, “Broadway Bound” closed on Broadway before it opened! I know the play much too well, and I couldn’t make it past the first act, so that’s all I can report on.
The actors seem to play a single intention: Zac Schuman as Eugene Jerome—the Neil Simon alter-ego—plays throughout with the unmitigated enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old; Chris Dewey as his ambitious brother Stanley plays worry, worry, (and only) worry; Avi Jacobson as Grandpa Ben delivers his lines as an alter kaker Woody Allen; and Marilyn Hughes as mother Kate, though entrancingly convincing in the realism of her acting, plays her emotional cards close to her apron with the comic sense of a Puritan Goodwife—while momma is supposed to be effortlessly, unintentionally funny.
Veteran Tim Beagley is featured as dour husband Jack, and Beagley is appropriately so; his monologue of confessing infidelity weaves a tale whereby your attention will hang.
Absent is the easy, wry humor as befits the culture, and laugh-lines are pushed like WASP boys asking, “Is it Jello yet?” Part of Jewish humor is ironic understatement (e.g., my best friend who is Jewish and lives--pardon the stereotype—in Florida, would, for instance, express a high compliment with a shrug and a “Not bad”).
The set is plum rectilinear in all aspects. Setting some furniture at an angle would increase tension and enable interesting blocking. Often, entire scenes are played with the focal character standing left center and talking to stage left; instead of the pivotal character in focus, we get a static and extended over-the-shoulder shot of the other characters listening. The boys’ room is raised at the back of the small stage which makes them seem very far away from us, and that’s where the creative writing and jokes are supposed to abound. The crazy energy of the two young animated and anxious men raised in the era of Three Stooges Vaudeville is suppressed and curtailed by the paucity of stage movement.
The costumes and the set decoration are the highlights of the production. Down to Blanche’s fur coat, and the boy’s galoshes,Marjorie Moore has fashioned a collection of duds that take you right to that era. Alas, that was a tad undone by dressing Stanley in a 1970’s flair-bottom khaki suit in winter—I had one like it in ‘73, but I never wore it past Labor Day. Blanches’ big red dress seemed more recent than the Truman era.
A major drawback is the underdone lighting design of Jon Gourdine. There are front lights, and a couple of down-light specials, but no back or side lighting, which makes everything seem two dimensional. In the 1940’s, the incandescent bulb threw a warm yellow glow which could have warmed us up to laugh. Instead, we believe Georgie Craig as Blanche when she talks about how frigid it is there in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach in winter; the lighting in the Jerome household of this production leaves us cold.
There were a few polite audience titters along the way, and weak applause at the first act curtain. Then I had a cookie and a coca-cola and cut-out. I know it’s controversial to review a play if you haven’t seen the second act. But short of Linda Lavin and Matthew Broderick coming out in Act Two, I just didn’t think that I could hang on for another hour without plotzing from such a case of shpilkis (though I've heard from others that Act Two was better...go figure).
BROADWAY BOUND by Neil Simon
Directed by Phoebe Moyer
At the Masquers Playhouse through Feb 25
105 Park Place, Point Richmond
http://www.masquers.org/ 510-232-4031
Costumes by Marjorie Moore, lighting by Jon Gourdine, properties master Jean Rose, production manager Arthur Atlas, sound design by Billie Cox, stage manager Betsy Bell Ringer. (No set design credit listed, but set construction by: L. Bradshaw, R. Bradshaw, L. Ellinwood, J. Heckel, J. Hull, A. Jensen, H. Lankford, M. Paradis, J. Ponder, B. Westman.)
WITH: Timothy Beagley, Georgie Craig, Chris Dewey, Marilyn Hughes, Avi Jacobson, and Zac Schuman.
John A. McMullen II MA MFA is a member of SDC, SFBATCC, ATCA.
EJ Dunne edits.
