'Brighton Beach Memoirs' revival is a heartbreaker
"Brighton Beach Memoirs" is not as good as it was in 1983. It is even better. Neil Simon's coming-of-age autobiographical comedy is not as heartwarming as it was when the hit starred young Matthew Broderick and ran three years. It's now also a heartbreaker.
"Brighton Beach" -- the Depression-era memories of a teen named Eugene and his extended family in 1937 -- is the first of an audacious coupling of two of Simon's four substantial plays from the '80s. "Broadway Bound," about many of the same people after World War II, opens Dec. 10, after which both will run in repertory for what deserves to be - oh, I don't know - maybe forever.
David Cromer (the Chicago director known off-Broadway for his bold musical reinvention of "Adding Machine" and the revelatory "Our Town") moves uptown with a high-wire act of old-fashioned tradition and an emotional honesty so acute it feels radical.
With his beautifully cast and calibrated production, Cromer keeps the pace and rhythm of Simon's humor while recognizing shadows more often seen in American tragedies by Arthur Miller. Narrator Eugene - played with astonishing maturity and affection by gifted newcomer Noah Robbins - doesn't miss the inbuilt jokes about the horrors of broiled liver and puberty, and diseases too scary to be spoken aloud. But we never are allowed to forget that the laughs are attached to a price.
Laurie Metcalf has a wonderful lack of compromise as the mother of two boys (the other played with layers of conflicted passions by Santino Fontana), and the sister of a widow (Jessica Hecht) and her two daughters - the pampered sickly one (Gracie Bea Lawrence) and the one yearning to escape as a Broadway star (Alexandra Socha).
Everything depends upon the sinking shoulders of the overworked father, portrayed by Dennis Boutsikaris with crushing delicacy and strength. This husband and wife, for all their burdens, clearly still get an erotic charge from one another. Everyone lives in the crowded, rented two-story wood house, designed with meticulous detail and not too much comfort by John Lee Beatty. They really make us care what happens to them, which - good for Broadway - is a story for another day.
WHAT "Brighton Beach Memoirs"
WHERE Nederlander
Theatre, 208 W. 41st St.
INFO $65-$100; 212-307-4100; theneilsimonplays.com
BOTTOM LINE The triumph of tough love.
