Lost in Yonkers, Neil Simon's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play is considered by many to be one of his best, and it's currently receiving a wonderfully heartfelt production opening the 16th season at the NJT.
As the show begins, 15 and 13 year old brothers, Jay (Robert Love) and Arty (Leo B. Ramsey), are uncomfortably waiting in their Grandma's stuffy New York apartment. Grandma Kurnitz (Nancy Lewis) is an elderly widow living above her candy store. She's a German immigrant who has seen a lot of, and been the victim of, much turbulence and grief, and she has come out the other side thick-skinned and hard-boiled. She doesn't suffer the weak gladly, and this includes her children. In fact, it seems Grandma doesn't really do anything "gladly". One of her daughters, Bella (Kelley Weber), lives with her and helps run the store. Bella is childlike and easily distracted, constantly under the stern thumb of her mother, yet she's also buoyant, resilient and longing for connection with anyone outside of their Yonkers apartment. Her older brother Eddie (Gary Glasgow) has dropped by with his two boys trailing behind. Eddie needs a place for them to stay while he hits the southern road to sell scrap metal, trying to pay off the debt he accrued from a loan shark when his late wife was in the hospital. The boys, still grieving, are terrified at the prospect of staying more than an hour at Grandma's apartment, much less several months, but their father is left with no choice, and Grandma begrudgingly takes them in.
