The Demise of Brighton Beach Memoirs

AKIE BERMISS: There was a time in Junior High that I fancied myself an aspiring playwright.  I entered contests, wrote little skits for class, and I surrounded myself with the work of the great American playwrights .  The two people at the top of my list?  August Wilson — for his ability to combine the mundane and the mystical — and Neil Simon.  I adored his writing: Sweet Charity, Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, and The Out-of-Towners.   And, of course, Brighton Beach Memoirs.

What, you say?  A black kid growing up in Brooklyn loved Brighton Beach Memoirs — a play about a Jewish kid coming of age in Brooklyn in the 1930s.  Well, yes!  Without getting to far into it, I drew a lot of similarities between the Brighton Beach Memoirs experience and my own.  And I’ve often found that many good plays are like that.  No matter who you are or what your background or gender or philosophical disposition, it affects you.  It moves you.  And you can relate to it.  That’s how theatre is meant to be enjoyed, is it not.  Aristotle discusses the phenomenon of mimesis in his Poetics as essentially the ability to enjoy drama/tragedy through the balance of first being removed from it — knowing that its not actually happening to You — and yet being able to relate to it and identify with characters and their plights.  A classical, and therefore arcane, concept of drama, to be sure, but its still the bread and butter of movies, television, and stage today (whatever the post-modernists will tell you).  So, suffice it to say, I was able to enjoy the play on many levels for reasons curious and unfounded but also those proven to be effective down the centuries.

So, Brighton Beach Memoirs is due to close after only a brief soft opening on Broadway this year.  The cause?  Weak ticket sales.  And perhaps that IS cause for alarm.  From such a great playwright, its arguably one of his more popular plays and its alarming for many of us to consider the notion that a revival on grand old Broadway wouldn’t attract theatre-lovers far and wide.  But then, these are strange times for the performing arts.  I don’t think its suicidally inaccurate to assert that Broadway has really come down in popularity this past decade and much of the new work being put on there is hardly the newest and most badass stuff going on.  Its definitely not inaccurate to say that television is the more widespread medium for dramatic, comedic, and even musical entertainment.  While in the earlier half of the previous century, the play was, indeed, the thing!

I may becoming from a prejudiced place, but I don’t think the failure of Brighton Beach Memoirs has anything to do with the quality of the play, or its relevancy (even when it premiered in the 70s, it was a play about the 30s!), or Simon’s legacy as a playwright.  The play is still great theatre.  The story is still immediately compelling.  And Simon’s art won’t lose its strength or excellence because of age.  Its timeless.  Certainly, inarguably timeless.

This is the play that launched Matthew Broderick’s career, after all.

The cause is, therefore, probably more to do with the location and the medium.  While my love of plays has not diminished any since those pre-adolescent days of yore, I can’t say I go out to the theatre much.  The prices are just too high, the distance is just too great, and the inconvenience is just too… inconvenient.  Instead of thinking of this as a lukewarm reception to Simon, maybe we should re-frame it as a lukewarm reception to Broadway.  Its perhaps FINALLY time for Broadway to start the vamp for its Eleven O’clock number and queue up the players for the big finish.  Mind you, this is no big television proponent speaking, but really?  Plays?  On stage?  In a fixed location?  Who can stand that in this era of on-demand driven media?  If, say, a Hulu version of the play were to make an appearance, we might find that a new generation of Simon-lovers would make its presence known.

Come now, playwrights — get with the times.  I still believe there is a place for live theatre, but its possible that Times Square ain’t it.  What’s wonderful about plays is that you can take your players almost anywhere and: put it on.  Its time for some new trailblazers to step up and use the new communication tools at our disposal to entertain us.  We are here, we are still human, we still feel — if material is made available to us, we’ll come to it.

And I think Simon’s work would translate to the new media with ease.  Its all there, on the page.  All it requires is the people and the direction, and the drive.  So Brighton Beach Memoirs closes before it ever really opens on Broadway.  So what?  What’s Broadway got to do with me? I’ve got HBO, Netflix, and Hulu.  Give me my raison de regarder, and I will attend your tale.

Yeah, its a stretch, but it works nonetheless.

HOWARD MEGDAL: My particular ire is less on behalf of the theatre community over seeing Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs close in just a week, and more over the conclusions drawn by Patrick Healy in his New York Times analysis of the reasons for the closing.

Healy writes that “the failure also reflects America’s evolving sense of humor and taste.” He also describes American taste as “reality shows like ‘American Idol,’ one-liners to the sardonic humor of ‘The Office,’ and the heavily plotted comedy of Mr. Simon’s film ‘California Suite’ to the animated wit of ‘Up’ and the fratty banter of ‘The Hangover,’ two of the summer’s biggest hits.”

To suggest somehow that Brighton Beach Memoirs can’t succeed in today’s far different popular culture is to ignore the fact that Simon’s original ‘Memoirs’ ran from 1983-1986, and managed to find an audience in such a sophisticated time that popular movies included “National Lampoon’s Vacation”, “Rambo: First Blood Part II”, and the ultra-intellectual “Croccodile Dundee.”

Some of the Jewish wit from that golden era on television included “Dallas”, “Dynasty”, “Family Ties” and even “The A-Team”, which was originally cast with Sid Caesar as B.A. Baracus and Imogene Coca as Faceman.

So it certainly wasn’t the popular film and television that kept this show from being a hit, particularly given that 2009’s TV/film universe includes popular entities like “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Bored to Death”, shows that make Neil Simon angst seem mainstream by comparison. Recent hits like ‘30 Rock’ owe a great deal to Simon’s portrayal of writers in ‘Laughter on the 23rd Floor’, and ‘The Sopranos’, oddly enough, has Simon-esque wit in many of the scenes with Tony’s domestic family.

So it isn’t some rejection of a past culture that frankly, never existed, certainly not at the time Simon’s Jerome trilogy did. Allow me to submit a different reason. I am 29 years old, and should be in the vanguard of those who are rejecting Neil Simon’s work, according to Healy’s article. Of course, I’m not. I adore so many of his films and plays, and have seen them on Broadway with my parents since I was five years old, and see Brighton Beach Memoirs. My wife, 30, feels exactly the same way.

In other words: we weren’t going to shell out $100 a ticket for a show we’d already seen, then watched repeatedly on film in the years since. Certainly not in the first week.

This doesn’t mean we secretly wish Neil Simon would write more like whoever pens the atrocity “Two and a Half Men” anymore than we originally left ‘Lost In Yonkers’ thinking we wanted it to sound more like “Bosom Buddies” or “Weekend at Bernies 2.”

But anyone over the age of 30 who would enjoy the Neil Simon trilogy… has seen the Neil Simon trilogy. Many times. In person. On film. Many of us did the show in high school or college.

Had a new Neil Simon play, especially a fourth play built around Eugene Jerome, come to Broadway, my wife and I would have been first in line. Had the play come 5-10 years from now, we’d have brought children to the play. But everyone who could appreciate the play has seen it. And for those younger than us… $100 a ticket’s awfully tough to reach. Frankly, anyone younger than us is disproportionately likely not to have a job in the 2009 economy… let alone the discretionary income for a Neil Simon play at full price.

A quote at the end of Healy’s piece gets closer, but misses it as well.

“Too soon for Neil Simon plays to be classified as classics and too late for them to be seen as relevant,” wrote Spence Halperin, a social worker in New York City. “Try again in 15 years.”

Wrong- the show is both a classic and entirely relevant. Rather, too soon to pay Broadway prices when I can watch the film on DVD with my wife, and can’t yet share with my child the experience of Neil Simon dialogue within the context of live theatre.

So let’s try not to extrapolate from some poor timing of a truly brilliant work, and playwright, that tastes have moved on from the humorous, and timeless stories in Neil Simon plays. For the love of God, Broadway, do not take this as a sign to move forward with plays that are less Mamet and Sorkin, and more whoever writes “Cougar Town.”

And let’s not assign Neil Simon to the scrap heap of history. Too many of the youngsters who are wrongly characterized as wishing for more poop jokes during his unparalleled dialogue will be disappointed, and stay away from Broadway shows like that forever.

MOLLY SCHOEMANN: One shouldn’t shell out $80 a ticket for just any theater experience. I like to make sure I’m getting the most for my money. Before I consider buying tickets, I tend to ask myself certain questions—questions like, ‘are there puppets in this show?’ and ‘does the title contain the word ‘urine’?’ This is just one way to make sure that a Broadway show will be worth its weight in all the other shows you’ll need to Tivo while you spend an entire evening out of the house and not wearing sweatpants.

I’ve also found that if a show is at least three times removed from its primary incarnation– for instance, if it’s based on a videogame that was made into an action-figure that became a mini-series—you’re bound to at least know what you’re getting into. And if there’s one thing I’m fond of entertainment-wise, it’s the comfortingly familiar.

Celebrities I’ve seen on television and in the movies also help to add a sense of familiarity to a stage play. Fortunately the website Broadway.com allows you to filter your search for shows by the category, “Celebs on Stage”. Throwing Jude Law or James Gandolfini into a performance also gives me something to actually talk about at work the next day. Trust me, none of my coworkers want to hear about my evening spent watching Brighton Beach Memoirs when they can hear about how I saw Harry Potter’s magic wand in Equus.

Brighton Beach Memoirs in particularly is very family-unfriendly. It may be the story of a young boy who comes of age, but it’s certainly not for children, who will be unable to focus on the storyline and characters without a commercial break every few minutes. Plus none of the characters are cartoons or talking animals, and there are no straightforward and educational messages to be gleaned like, “don’t talk to strangers” and “brushing your teeth is fun”.

In fact, don’t even think about bringing your kids to a Broadway show if it doesn’t have performers dressed up like giraffes, gamboling through the audience on stilts, or if the title lacks the phrase ‘-on Ice’. By the time your kids stop whining about how you made them silence their cell phones, it will be intermission and they’ll be begging you for an $8 KitKat. If you thought movie theater refreshments were expensive, wait ‘til you get a load of the concession stand at the Gershwin. Plus, while most musicals have at least a few souvenir T-shirts and other merchandise, very few plays have gotten the memo that people don’t rely on their memories anymore—they rely on buying things that will remind them of experiences they’ve had. Did you even SEE Wicked if you didn’t leave the theater clutching an $18 witch hat keychain? I think not. Brighton Beach Memoirs, if I can’t buy a lunchbox with a picture of your cast on it, you’re wasting my time even more.

Tags: Brighton Beach Memoirs, Neil Simon, Patrick Healy, The Odd couple

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Arts & Culture, Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.