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Brighton Beach Memoirs Is Semi-Funny, Semi-Serious, and Only Semi-Effective

Eugene Jerome tells it like he lives it. You see he wants to be a writer and these are his memoirs. Truthfully, they belong to Neil Simon. His award winning Brighton Beach Memoirs is semi-autobiographical, and in the hands of Contemporary Theatre of Dallas and director Michael Serrecchia, it’s also semi-funny, semi-serious, and only semi-effective.
By David Novinski |
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Eugene Jerome tells it like he lives it. He wants to be a writer, and these are his memoirs. Truthfully, they belong to Neil Simon. His award-winning Brighton Beach Memoirs is semi-autobiographical, and in the hands of Contemporary Theatre of Dallas and director Michael Serrecchia, it’s also semi-funny, semi-serious, and only semi-effective.

The Jerome household is crowded. Presided over by Jack but run by Kate, it holds their two sons, their two nieces and Kate’s sister Blanche. On Rodney Dobbs’ multilayered, multi-roomed set, these two families living all together may remind you of something. It’s much more than a hunch. This group somehow forms a family. Blanche’s husband died and they moved in with her sister, and that’s how they became the Brooklyn Bunch. The comedy is just as situational as that television show. In the Jewish version of the Brady household, someone loses something that isn’t a retainer. Someone else wants to do something but has to “wait until dad gets home.” In some productions, these particulars can give rise to universal themes such as integrity, friendship and family. Or they can sink down to setups for the laugh track. This production is a case of the latter more than the former.

As a memoir, the play hinges on the performance of Eugene, who is narrating constantly. Andrew W. Cope creates a character somewhere between Billy Crystal and Gilbert Gottfried, which is fine if you are a fan of either. The reference to stand-up is apt as Cope stands out in an otherwise naturalistic cast, save one other performer.  If Cope’s Jerome is somewhere between broad and broader, Diane Worman’s Blanche is somewhere between blind and blinder. Taking the textual references to her dying eyesight to the extreme, Worman squints and cranes throughout. At times it seems that Blanche’s impairments are mental as well as visual. The irony with these two actors is that the most powerful moments of their performances (as well as possibly the production) were when they drastically simplified their characters. When Eugene narrates to the audience a letter his mother is reading, Cope delivers these lines simply, without losing the character entirely. Similarly, when Blanche finally stands up to her sister, Worman loses the squint, the drawl and the neck craning. The effect is louder than shouting. In both cases, you could feel the audience’s tension melt along with the actor’s. Tragically, it returned moments later.

Fortunately, Contemporary Theatre has an ace in the hole with Doug Jackson. He brings undeniable experience and authority to his performance as Jack Jerome.  Jackson’s Jack is not merely the wise patriarch, but also works as a masculine paragon for his sons to emulate. They say opposites attract, and so it is with the harried matriarch married to this pap unflappable. Cindee Mayfield plays Kate Jerome as worried and wary but never weary. She’s tough as nails and about as motherly. The chemistry of these two create an illusion of a long marriage. There oldest is played with effortless honesty by Will Christoferson. In a play about family, I guess you could say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. So it would seem with Blanche’s kids played by Marla Jo Kelly and Jourdan Stein.

The play contains a “butler did it” ending that relies on the impending world war to make a message out of these meandering memoirs. This is made more glaring by Serrecchia’s direction. The family is faced with the possibility of having to take in more relatives, but because of Cope’s antics, Eugene hasn’t felt like a part of the structure of the family all along. If he is our ticket into this world and he doesn’t fit, we remain outside as well. Consequently, we inherit none of the inherent values of understanding and sacrifice. He declares at the end of the play that he has matured, and it is supposed to be humorously naïve. I just don’t think they realize how naïve.

Photo: Andrews Cope as Eugene Jerome (Credit: George Wada)

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