Nostalgic ‘Memoirs’

It’s one of America’s favorite plays, winning playwright Neil Simon a prestigious award and silencing some of his toughest critics. Further, a Broadway theater was given Simon’s name the year the play premiered. And it’s one of Simon’s best.

The delightfully nostalgic drama-comedy is “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” on stage at Coeur d’Alene’s Lake City Playhouse Friday through Jan. 28. The play is Simon’s humorous portrait of an American family in the 1930s as seen through the eyes of an irrepressible 15-year-old boy.

As a baseball player and aspiring writer, Eugene Morris Jerome’s adolescent insights about the Great Depression, his family and growing up are poignant yet hysterical. The struggling family of seven, living in overcrowded, prewar Brooklyn in 1937, is a coming-of-age story.

Todd Jasmin, technical director at the Lake City Playhouse since fall of 2004, is directing and designing the set and lights.

” ‘Brighton Beach’ is the first of an autobiographical trilogy by Neil Simon,” Jasmin says. “As the narrator, Eugene, Simon relives his growing-up years while serving as a direct conduit to the audience. During the play, Eugene sometimes steps outside the ‘fourth wall’ and speaks frankly to the audience. His asides are both very telling and very humorous.”

Jasmin says Simon seems to pay homage to his eccentric yet well-meaning family. Also evidenced in the play is the shaping of Simon’s keen sense of humor during those formative, pre-World War II years.

Simon – second only to Shakespeare as the most-performed playwright of all time, with the most Broadway hits – is perhaps best known for “The Odd Couple.” But it was “Brighton Beach Memoirs” that earned Simon the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for best play in 1983. The trilogy, composed of “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” “Biloxi Blues” and “Broadway Bound,” earned Simon respect as a serious dramatist.

The characters consist of a Jewish family of seven. Eugene is in the throes of pubescence. With his parents, Jack and Kate, and older brother, Stanley, the family has also taken in Kate’s sister, Blanche, and her two daughters, Nora and Laurie.

“Their tenement was a little cramped before the three moved in, so now they’re living on top of each other,” Jasmin says. “The set design attempts to capture that crowded, condensed feeling. The family tries to cope financially in post-Depression New York City; each of them with their individual tribulations, but ultimately coping as a family, for better or worse.”

The family is played by four female and three male actors.

“The actors range in experience,” Jasmin says, “and are Vincent Aurora (Jack), Kathie O’Brien (Kate), Troy Anast (Stanley), Elsie Patrick (Aunt Blanche), and Chelsea Curran and Jessi Little (Nora and Laurie). The least-experienced actor, Jay Donnolo, plays the narrator, Eugene. He is superb.”

Jasmin says many talented kids could have acted the role of Eugene, but “Jay just got up there and was Eugene.”

According to Jasmin, Donnolo possesses a natural, endearing quality that grasps the character of the young Neil Simon, played once by Matthew Broderick in his first Broadway role.

Jasmin’s enthusiasm extends to the entire cast.

“They’re dedicated, sharp and fun-loving. My goal in casting this show wasn’t to get seven actors to fill the individual parts, but to cast a family from the outset. Much of the auditions were geared toward group chemistry and compatibility. Now, as we delve into and try to flush out the Jerome family, the ensemble has become a family as well.”

Jasmin will direct “Biloxi Blues” at the playhouse next season, which has Simon headed to boot camp in Mississippi during the start of WWII. The following season, Jasmin will end the trilogy with “Broadway Bound,” which focuses on Simon’s early foibles as a sketch comedy writer in the early ‘50s.

“Brighton Beach Memoirs,” probably the most poignant of the three plays, contains some strong language and mature situations.

“For that reason,” Jasmin says, “we’re attaching a PG-13 rating to it, asking kids 12 and under to be accompanied by an adult. Let’s just say Eugene’s entered puberty and is curious. He seeks advice from his older brother, Stanley, and these exchanges warrant our disclaimer.”

Jasmin says those scenes also happen to be the funniest scenes in the play. Neil Simon did not set out to offend anyone, Jasmine notes, but rather uses the scenes to honestly tell the story of his own coming-of-age.

Meanwhile, Jasmin and the cast are working overtime to get the show ready. Each actor helps with at least one technical element, such as props, costumes, set or lighting.

“These last two weeks are fairly intense,” Jasmin says, “but challenging and satisfying as well. We’re all extremely excited about putting this show on the stage.”

Jasmin’s background prepared him in his role as director.

“I’ve built 20 sets, directed three shows and acted in five others, catching the theater ‘bug’ in Helena, Montana; building sets at Carroll College, a small liberal arts school in 1986. I finally got the nerve to audition there, and I’ve been in theater ever since. Then, I spent 1994 touring the world as the Harlem Globetrotters’ announcer, butchering languages in such places as Japan, Morocco, Tunisia and Hungary.”

The humorous Jasmin earned an MFA in directing at the University of Idaho, where he met his wife-to-be when she auditioned for a show he directed. She didn’t win the part, but he did ask her for a date, and the two are now married. Their latest roles are parenting their 2½-year-old daughter, Eliza Rae.