'Lost in Yonkers' found at Theater J

Neil Simon play is the first production to run in D.C. since 1991

In January 1991, Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers" opened in a pre-Broadway run at the National Theatre. The Post's chief drama critic at the time, Lloyd Rose, began her mixed-to-negative review with the opinion that Simon "has been writing plays for 30 years and he still can't handle the basic elements of dramaturgy," later faulting him for not "following his darker impulses to an honest conclusion."

Simon was not happy with that assessment. He was likely unamused a month later as well, when Frank Rich of the New York Times criticized the play's predictability, "flaccid structure and automatic-pilot jokeyness," while praising the "raw anguish" of some of Simon's characters.

"Lost in Yonkers" went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama, ran on Broadway for nearly two years and was made into a 1993 film.

Now, Theater J is mounting the first production in Washington since 1991, which runs Wednesday night through Nov. 29. Jerry Whiddon is directing and Lloyd Rose herself, who left The Post earlier in the decade to become a full-time author, is helping Whiddon in rehearsals as his "dramaturgical consultant" on the play. (Rose gently but firmly declined to be interviewed for this article.)

The cast includes Tana Hicken and Holly Twyford, together again after their lauded pairing in Studio Theatre's "The Road to Mecca" last year. Hicken plays the embittered Grandma Kurnitz, a steely German Jewish matriarch whose three adult children remain shellshocked from their affection-starved childhoods. Twyford plays her daughter Bella, who suffers from a mild cognitive disability.

It is the summer of 1942, and into Grandma Kurnitz and Bella's Yonkers apartment come Grandma's newly widowed son Eddie (Kevin Bergen), who needs to leave his two boys (Max Talisman and Kyle Schliefer) with her while he travels. Grandma Kurnitz's other children, Louie (Marcus Kyd) the gangster and the breathless Gert (Lise Bruneau), also turn up.

Whiddon says he found Simon's "Lost in Yonkers" to be a real actors' script. "I developed a real affection for the play -- for its playability." And in the abrupt transitions from pathos to hilarity that some critics faulted, Whiddon has found a challenge. "How do you approach the comedy, at the same time you know it's either right in the middle of, or preceding, or right after a moment of pathos?" he asks. The answer, Whiddon concludes: "It's all in the same moment. It's not separate things. . . . For me, it's always part of a larger context."

As for the dramaturgical quirks of "Lost in Yonkers," Theater J Artistic Director Ari Roth says the play "creates its own strange rhythm. It may wrap up a tad neatly. It may not be a classic-classic play, but for a while there, it's pretty great."

A singing 'Barrio Grrrl'

In her new family musical "Barrio Grrrl!," Quiara Alegría Hudes, who wrote the book for the Tony-winning musical "In the Heights," combines her love of fantasy, family and the ethnically rich Philadelphia neighborhoods where she grew up.

The hour-long piece, geared to kids 9 and older, premieres at the Kennedy Center's Family Theater on Saturday and runs through Nov. 15. (Another new play by Hudes, "26 Miles," opens Oct. 28 at Round House Theatre in Bethesda.)

"Barrio Grrrl!" grew out of a play Hudes was working on that was, she says, "very edgy" and adult. But, she adds, "the center of it was this scrappy hero who wanted to save the world."