For all the alleged controversy we’re said to have been fomenting (that’s the chatter amongst a small circle of folks who receive withering emails from the crazy folks at COPMA), the rest of our 14,000 ticket holders this year (that’s how many have come to SEAGULL, ZERO, and now YONKERS with 10 more days left to go on the run) have been experiencing a Theater J that’s been delivering rich, deep, solid, thought-provoking work that’s been—dare we say it?—pretty much middle of the road. It’s given us a great opportunity to expand our base by bringing in lots of new attendees to the theater; AND we’ve taken up the cause of bringing our story out to as many gathering spots as possible; conferences, classrooms, festivals, places of worship. And now last night, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with the warm folks at Washington Hebrew Congregation where 60 members of their L’Chaim series came to a salon at the home of Van and Sandy Sabel and—since 90% of them had all seen the play–and the other 10% were scheduled to go this weekend—we had an amazing talk about the play in, what began as a great interview (or me) driven by Rabbi Bruce Lustig and then turned into a free flowing discussion with all in attendance.
The rabbi’s finest point was that, after the Brighton Beach/Biloxi Blues/Broadway Bound trilogy that proved so autobiographical of Neil Simon’s youth, here Simon was following up the trilogy with a deeply personal autobiography—not of Simon’s childhood per se—but of the American Jewish community writ large. We talked of the scars of experience that become ameliorated from one generation to the next, and the insistence upon more demonstrative love and affect as Neil Simon himself demonstrates in his own life, leaving the emotionally fraught world of New York that delivered him to the softer, more emotionally affirming world of Los Angeles that seemed to offer comfort in the wake of personal loss.
In fact the most autobiographical material in YONKERS, I submitted, had nothing to do with Bella or Grandma, or even the boys being stuck in a relative’s home; it had to do with Eddie losing a wife to cancer and being stuck as a single parent in the middle of his life and career… Later, I discussed the universal resonance of the play, and its impact upon my very diverse assemblage of students from the University of Michigan and California at Berkeley. I read an excerpt from one of the student essays; this, from a Korean-American student who saw his own family drama being played out on stage. Here’s a bit of his entry: Keep reading →



