Wrong tone undermines ‘Yonkers’

Director Brian Scott has given the wrong tone to Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers" at the Las Vegas Little Theatre, but I'm in total sympathy for what the poor man was up against.

Neil Simon's 1991 play gives us a dysfunctional wartime family that features a woman throwing a cup of hot tea into her daughter's face; two teenagers trying to rob their grandmother of her life's savings; a father who seems to have no understanding of what his kids, who have just lost their mother, are going through; and a grandmother who would rather have her son be killed by a loan shark than be stuck living with his children.

The plot is Eugene O'Neill without O'Neill's insights.

Things feel rocky when we first meet Gail Romero as the Yonkers grandmother. She comes across too young. It doesn't help that she has her hair all shiny, polish gray, as if she just came from the Old Age Home Hair Salon. Are there ever any old women in plays without gray hair? Romero's earnest villainy reminded me of the doomed neurotic Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations." And from this is supposed to come funny?

The two grandkids, who, we're told, are 13 and 15, look like they're separated by about two decades. It's an unfortunate mismatch that changes the foundation of their relationship.

Alex Pink, though, brings healthy comic blood to his role as Uncle Louie. The man's a con, but Pink makes you understand why the boys adore him.

And Marlena Shapiro brings a surprising amount of sanity and humor to her character of the dimwitted Aunt Bella.

Ron Lindblom's set reeks of immigrant New York. It's an old-person's apartment drowning in lace that helps you understand why the two teenagers would hate it.

To Scott's credit, he never cheapens the script, never talks down to us. And in the final scene, he creates a sort of whimsical, tough mood that suggests the tale is a fond remembrance of the bad, old days.

Perhaps if Scott had been able to sustain that point of view, the play's tone might have made dramatic sense.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat @aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.