A young boy from Brooklyn comes of age in the first play in Neil Simon’s semi-autobiographical “Eugene Trilogy”—followed by Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound. Meet Eugene Jerome and his family, fighting the hard times and sometimes each other—with laughter, tears, and love. It is 1937 in Brooklyn during the heart of the Depression. Fifteen-year-old Eugene Jerome lives in Brighton Beach with his family. He is witty, perceptive, obsessed with sex, and forever fantasizing his baseball-diamond triumphs as star pitcher for the New York Yankees. As our guide through his “memoirs,” Eugene takes us through a series of trenchant observations and insights that show his family meeting life's challenges with pride, spirit, and a marvelous sense of humor. But as World War II looms ever closer, Eugene sees his own innocence slipping away as the first important era of his life ends—and a new one begins. Winner of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play

Length: 2 acts.

The second in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Neil Simon's trilogy which began with Brighton Beach Memoirs and concluded with Broadway Bound. When we last met Eugene Jerome, he was coping with adolescence in 1930's Brooklyn. Here, he is a young army recruit during WW II, going through basic training and learning about Life and Love with a capital 'L' along with some harsher lessons, while stationed at boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1943.

Neil Simon's recollections of life in Brooklyln in the 1930's came to the stage in this family drama with humorous interludes. The energetic 15-year-old Eugene is everywhere and sometimes not available when he's wanted. But he helps us become familiar with problems he and his relatives have to solve. There is fun and excitement but many doubts aches, as well.

“A virtuosic debut [and] a wry look at immigrant life in the global age.” —Vogue Having left Odessa for Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, with a sense of finality, the Nasmertov family has discovered that the divide between the old world and the new is not nearly as clear-cut as they had imagined. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, returning is just a matter of a plane ticket, and the Russian-owned shops in their adopted neighborhood stock even the most obscure comforts of home. Pursuing the American Dream once meant giving up everything, but does the dream still work if the past refuses to grow distant and mythical, remaining alarmingly within reach? If the Nasmertov parents can afford only to look forward, learning the rules of aspiration, the family’s youngest, Frida, can’t help looking back—and asking far too many questions. Yelena Akhtiorskaya’s exceptional debut has been hailed not only as the great novel of Brighton Beach but as a “breath of fresh air … [and] a testament to Akhtiorskaya’s wit, generosity, and immense talent as a young American author” (NPR).

Koprince (English, U. of North Dakota at Grand Forks) seeks to grant the prolific and popular playwright a measure of the serious literary attention that has passed his work by. She analyzes 16 of Simon's comedies beginning with his first Broadway effort, Blow your horn (1961) and ending with Laughter on the 23rd floor (1993). Koprince emphasizes Simon's versatility, craftsmanship, and willingness to experiment with the comedic form as well as the fundamentally serious nature of his plays. Small format: 5.25x7.25". Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A coming of age tale that focuses on brothers Arty and Jay, left in the care of their Grandma Kurnitz and Aunt Bella in Yonkers, New York. Their desperate father, Eddie, works as a traveling salesman to pay off debts incurred following the death of his wife. Grandma is a severe, frightfully intimidating immigrant who terrified her children as they were growing up, damaging each of them to varying degrees. Bella is a sweet but mentally slow and highly excitable woman who longs to marry an usher at the local movie house so she can escape the oppressive household and create a life and family of her own. Her brother Louie is a small-time, tough-talking hoodlum who is on the run, while her sister Gert suffers from a breathing problem with causes more psychological than physical problems. Missing much of the sentimentality of the plays comprising Simon's earlier Eugene trilogy, Lost in Yonkers climaxes with a dramatic confrontation between embittered mother and lonely daughter that creates a permanent fissure in this highly dysfunctional family.