Hailey Henderson and Rebecca Nachison as Bella and Grandma.
Neil Simon’s 1990 Lost in Yonkers, which runs through October 24 at Eugene’s Very Little Theatre, is a perfectly crafted, bitterly sweet family drama with writing as tight as a TV sitcom – but with much more personality and heart.
The VLT production, directed by Chris Pinto, doesn’t miss an emotional trick. Eugene newcomer Hailey Henderson leads a superb cast in telling the story of a perfectly dysfunctional Jewish family – nearly all of whose dysfunction stems from the World War II experiences of its matriarch, played sternly by Rebecca Nachison.
As the lights come up on the show, recently widowed Eddie (Paul Rhoden) has come back home to his mother’s home in Yonkers in hopes of convincing her to take care of his two young teenage boys while he heads south to take a year-long traveling job. He desperately needs to raise $9,000 to pay off the loan shark who advanced him money when his wife, the boys’ mom, was dying of cancer.
The opening scene is utterly comic, as Eddie frantically tries to keep his boys perfectly behaved while flitting in and out to negotiate with his mother in her offstage bedroom, but things gradually turn serious as he explains to the children that he needs to leave them with their grandmother so he can pay his debt – and not be killed by the loan shark.
The two boys’ performances carry much of the show. Aaron Conover, a 10th grader at South Eugene High School, is a splendid comic foil to Arty Cash McCallister’s solid depiction of Jay, the earnest older brother.
Soon, Bella appears – Eddie’s 30-something sister who regularly gets lost finding her way home. She is the charmingly odd but exasperating daughter whose development may or may not have been stunted by her frigidly abusive upbringing.
It is Bella’s final liberation from her mother’s tight control that forms the major arc of the play, and Henderson delivers the nuances of the role with both passion and control.
All this plays out on a stylishly realistic set by Bill Campbell.
Pinto’s direction makes the most of his actors’ strengths and stays nicely out of the way of Simon’s dialog.
This is a great play very well done. Go see it.