Cayman Mitchell as Eugene Morris Jerome. Photo by Daylon Walton.

  

Brighton Beach Memoirs

by Neil Simon

Presented by Onstage in Bedford

January 29 - February 14

at Onstage in Bedford
2821 R.D. Hurt Parkway (off Forest Ridge Drive)
Bedford, TX 76021
817-354-6444

$12-$15

8pm Fridays & Saturdays; 3pm Sundays
Runtime: 2 hours

Neil Simon put a lot of himself into Eugene Morris Jerome, the 15-year-old narrator of the semi-autobiographical comedy Brighton Beach Memoirs, first in the playwright's much-lauded "Eugene Trilogy." The speech cadence of a quick-witted teenage boy from a Brooklyn Jewish family in 1937 is typed into every syllable. "The tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife," says Eugene, turning to the audience from the dining table, "which is more than I could say for the liver."

Considering that Onstage in Bedford's cast of seven (directed by Shane Peterman) is more ham on Wonder Bread than pastrami on rye—no, really, they look and sound like Minnesota Lutherans trying to play Jews—they are doing some fine ensemble work.

Playing Eugene is lanky 15-year-old Cayman Mitchell, who's getting better with every role (we first liked him in Circle Theatre's A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant in 2008 and he was adorable as one of the "twins" in One Thirty Productions' recent Sanders Family Christmas). He's not copycatting Matthew Broderick, as so many Eugenes do, and he's hilariously earnest as he begs Stan, Eugene's worldlier older brother (played with touching vulnerability by Scott Higgins) for sex education. (Mitchell has a sure hand with comedy, but someone should have shown the kid how to throw a baseball for the opening speech.)

In the run-up to the Second World War, things are tough in the Jerome home. A young widowed aunt (Kris D. Walters) and her two nubile teenage daughters (Jenny Tityrin, Alex Altshuler) have moved in, setting off Eugene's sudden burst of puberty. Eugene's mother, Kate (Susan Doke), frets about feeding a family of seven on the meager earnings of her Willy Loman-esque husband Jack (Ken Orman). And they're all worried about the Jewish relatives in Poland who are trying to get to America before it's too late. If they make it safely to Brooklyn, where will they all sleep?

The nearly irresistible charm of this play lies in Simon's choice to reflect the bigger issues of the era—poverty, anti-Semitism and anti-Irish bias, women's limited opportunities for careers—by focusing on the humdrum details of daily life in a working class Jewish household. Kate buys food on a need-only basis, sending Jerome to Greenblatt's grocery more times a day than he'd like. When he grows up, he tells the audience, all he'll be trained for "is going to the store."

The men in this cast click well enough to pass as real father and sons. Orman telegraphs the physical weariness of a still-young man strained by two low-paying jobs and a lot of dependents. Imagine William H. Macy playing a Jewish dad, with a touch of a Fargo accent, and you've got Orman's Jack. Somehow he makes it work. His scenes with the boys are tender gems.

Brighton Beach Memoirs was famously a bust in its recent big-budget shot at a Broadway revival. It lasted exactly one performance. Maybe that's what makes the little production in Bedford feel like a mitzvah. On next to no dough, they're doing it just fine, getting every laugh Simon intended. They may be the most goyishe cast who've ever played the Jeromes of Brooklyn, but Mazel tov to them anyway.