Fine cast trumps stage design in 'Brighton Beach Memoirs'

A note to set designer Ian Zywica: Just because a play like “Brighton Beach Memoirs” has a specific location in its title doesn't necessarily mean that you have to literally depict it onstage.

Yet, that is what Zywica offers in Fox Valley Repertory's production of Neil Simon's award-winning 1983 comic drama at Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles. Zywica's stage design features photographic images of (presumably) a beautiful Brighton Beach ocean sunrise pictured on the main backdrop and two flanking wings. These images frame and loom behind a partially represented Brooklyn home interior inhabited by the combined Jewish Jerome and Morton families during the Great Depression.

Some may see Zywica's stage design either as too literal in location, or too symbolic if he and director Ronan Marra wanted to give the impression that the Jeromes and Mortons are too self-isolated in their house as if they're inhabiting their own island.

But my main complaint with this set design is that it comes off as a visual mishmash to the fraught family situations that Simon dramatically cooks up for “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” The picture postcard ocean view implies an inspirational outlook of limitless opportunity rather than the bulk of the script's naturalistic situations featuring extended family members arguing and practically tripping over each other in a cramped and crowded home.

“Brighton Beach Memoirs” focuses on Eugene Jerome (Ryan Stajmiger), a smart-alec and pubescent Yankees baseball fan who also has aspirations of becoming a writer (the play launched Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical “Eugene Trilogy” that also includes the subsequent plays “Biloxi Blues” and “Broadway Bound”).

Eugene serves as the play's narrator and provides his perspective on the families' joy and strife in 1937, which includes job issues for Eugene's big brother, Stanley (Joseph Galizia), and his overworked father, Jack (Joseph Stearns).

And then there's a lot of bubbling resentment between Eugene's exacting mother, Kate (Brigitte Ditmars), and her insecure widowed sister, Blanche Morton (Stephanie Chavara), whose two daughters, the teenage Nora (Ariel Begley) and slightly sickly Laurie (Elizabeth Stenholt), seem to get preferential treatment in the household.

Though I have issues with the visual approach to Fox Valley Rep's “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” there's not much to carp about when it comes to director Marra's work at steering the fine cast dramatically through their paces.

Some more dramatic verisimilitude might have been nice if years could have been added to the actors playing adults and some years subtracted from the actors playing their kids. But the acting ensemble is essentially solid and firmly in control of their characterizations.

As Eugene, Stajmiger is appropriately engaging and works extremely well opposite the often pained Stanley (Galizia) in their brotherly spats and chats (including a lot of comically frank sex talk that some parents in the audience might not want young kids to hear).

Stearns appears genuinely world weary as father Jack, while Ditmars is great as mother Kate, who is always one last straw away from slapping Eugene.

Chavara touchingly gets across widow Blanche's rudderless indecision, especially when faced with the whiny teenage demands of Begley's Nora and the manipulative calculating of Stenholt's Laurie.

Though living memory of the Great Depression is slowly slipping away, the family dynamics and conflicts of “Brighton Beach Memoirs” ring true and feel timeless. And that's thanks to a strong cast of actors who do their best to make you forget about the debatable visual approach to Fox Valley Rep's “Brighton Beach Memoirs.”

“Brighton Beach Memoirs”

★ ★ ½

<b>Location:</b> Fox Valley Repertory at Pheasant Run Resort, 4051 E. Main St., St. Charles, (630) 584-6324, <a href="http://foxvalleyrep.org">foxvalleyrep.org</a>

<b>Showtimes:</b> 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday through Oct. 19. Also 8 p.m. Aug. 28 and Sept. 4 and 2 p.m. Sept. 18, 25 and Oct. 16

<b>Tickets:</b> $32-$42; dinner packages available

<b>Running time:</b> About two hours and 30 minutes with intermission

<b>Parking:</b> Free adjacent lots

<b>Rating:</b> Mild profanity and much dialogue about a pubescent boy's sexual awakening makes this appropriate for teens and older