Brighton Beach Memoirs

I saw the play Brighton Beach Memoirs at the Hyde Park Opera House on Friday, May 8th. Bob Giroux and Lesley Ryan had invited us. Nancy was in Maine and could not go. But I did. Many other people we know were also at this opening night performance, including the Tobins and the Duchaceks. The play was interesting and the acting was terrific. I had a wonderful time.

Brighton Beach Memoirs is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon about growing up in a Jewish family in Brooklyn in 1937, as war loomed in Europe. The protagonist is a young teen-age boy, Eugene Jerome, who is just becoming interested in girls. (Neil Simon was 10 years old in 1937, so the timing is off slightly to be a true autobiography.) Brighton Beach is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, and Eugene was a beginning writer who was observing and writing about his family, hence the "memoirs" in the title of the play.

The best parts of the play were the many hilarious lines about Eugene's new interest in girls. This is not a play for children. The themes are definitely adult.

In addition to the coming-of-age theme, the play is also about the problems this extended family faced. Part of the family had lost its breadwinner, resulting in extra relatives moving into the Jerome house. The house was crowded. The extended family members did not always get along. Jobs were hard to come by, and there was a perpetual lack of money. This was, after all, during the Great Depression. And more extended family members were expected (at the end of the play) as refugees from Europe, where Jews were fleeing persecution from the Nazis.

How did this family cope with its problems? With laughter and tears. With imagination, determination and hard work. With bickering and arguing. But what struck me was that it was the family that coped with the problems. There was no mention of the government coming to the rescue. The play took place almost five years after Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in November 1932, but there was no mention of the New Deal. The only mentions of government were the police (who brought Eugene's father home after he had a heart attack on the subway) and the military (preparing for war). These are traditional functions of government. It is startling to realize how much our society has changed in terms of what we expect from the institutions of family and government.

This play made me think of Richard Feynman, who also grew up in a Jewish family in New York City (Queens) at about this time. Feynman was 19 in 1937, about the same age as Eugene's older brother.