Introducing Brighton Beach Memoirs
The final show at the Belwood Summer Theatre is one of the largest, most complex we've ever done in a summer season (barring of course last year's mega-production of Noises Off). It's Brighton Beach Memoirs, by the great American playwright Neil Simon.
Almost everyone knows who Neil Simon is, for he is one of the most commercially successful playwrights in history (the most successful, of course, is William Shakespeare). He is perhaps best known as the author of The Odd Couple, which was both a hit on stage and screen, but he has also penned many other plays, such as Lost in Yonkers, Rumors, Barefoot in the Park and I Ought to be in Pictures (produced last summer at the Ennotville Summer Theatre). So popular are his works that the licensing agents who hold the non-professional rights to his plays see fit to charge an extra $50 per performance for each of his plays (on top of the $75 per performance they have already boosted their base rate to from $35 just a year ago - but that's the topic for another post).
Brighton Beach Memoirs is one of Simon's most autobiographical works, a frank portrayal of himself as young boy growing up in the 1930's in Brighton Beach, New York, in an immigrant Jewish neighbourhood. Standing in for Simon is Eugene, a boy "almost but not quite 15." who narrates the story as it unfolds and plays an active role in what is happening (whether he realizes it or not). Eugene lives with his father, mother, brother, his aunt and her two daughters, all in the same cramped wooden frame house. Like most kids his age he is obsessed with baseball (or more specifically the Yankees), girls, of course (though he wouldn't dare say it to them) and his father, whom he sees in an almost heroic light, working hard to provide for the seven people in his household.
But things aren't going well, and as is usually the case in Simon's plays, tragedy lies just around the corner, and once things start to go wrong the situation keeps getting worse and worse. In true Neil Simon fashion though, laughter comes in at the last second to save the day, and the result is one of the most touching, endearing plays that we have in Belwood this summer.
Tickets? You know you know how to get them.
Almost everyone knows who Neil Simon is, for he is one of the most commercially successful playwrights in history (the most successful, of course, is William Shakespeare). He is perhaps best known as the author of The Odd Couple, which was both a hit on stage and screen, but he has also penned many other plays, such as Lost in Yonkers, Rumors, Barefoot in the Park and I Ought to be in Pictures (produced last summer at the Ennotville Summer Theatre). So popular are his works that the licensing agents who hold the non-professional rights to his plays see fit to charge an extra $50 per performance for each of his plays (on top of the $75 per performance they have already boosted their base rate to from $35 just a year ago - but that's the topic for another post).
Brighton Beach Memoirs is one of Simon's most autobiographical works, a frank portrayal of himself as young boy growing up in the 1930's in Brighton Beach, New York, in an immigrant Jewish neighbourhood. Standing in for Simon is Eugene, a boy "almost but not quite 15." who narrates the story as it unfolds and plays an active role in what is happening (whether he realizes it or not). Eugene lives with his father, mother, brother, his aunt and her two daughters, all in the same cramped wooden frame house. Like most kids his age he is obsessed with baseball (or more specifically the Yankees), girls, of course (though he wouldn't dare say it to them) and his father, whom he sees in an almost heroic light, working hard to provide for the seven people in his household.
But things aren't going well, and as is usually the case in Simon's plays, tragedy lies just around the corner, and once things start to go wrong the situation keeps getting worse and worse. In true Neil Simon fashion though, laughter comes in at the last second to save the day, and the result is one of the most touching, endearing plays that we have in Belwood this summer.
Tickets? You know you know how to get them.
Comments