Moviemaking; Brighton Beach Memoirs

Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” opened last week and continues its run this weekend and next weekend at the Fire Hall Theatre in downtown Grand Forks. Show times are at 7:30 p.m. nightly on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday each week, and there is a 2:00 p.m. matinee on Sunday, May 11th. Tickets are $18, or $15 for students and senior citizens.
Prolific playwright Simon is best known for his often wild romantic situation comedies. “Brighton Beach Memoirs” is packed with clever one-liners, but blends some intense, emotional, and ultimately heartwarming drama in its story of an extended Brooklyn working class family during the late 1930s.

The semi-autobiographical script is narrated directly to the audience by the adolescent Eugene. Obviously a surrogate for Simon, he is the younger son who tries to deal with and make sense of various family crises at the same time he is finding himself obsessed with girls, especially his pretty cousin Nora whose family is staying with them since her father died.

Simon’s play is a perceptive exploration of rampant sibling rivalry and stormy parent-child relationships, against a background of social and economic difficulties no less timely today than in the period the story is set. However, the characters’ cynical and even bitter veneer covers an innate love and respect for family as the ultimate support group. These are people who may often be preoccupied with themselves, but deep down understand why they and those around them act the way they do, even if they don’t want to admit it. Simon skillfully plots moments of realization for each of the characters that wring the most out of his commentary on human nature.

This production was designed and directed by Julia Porter, who previously acted in “Dracula” and “Sweet Charity,” and makes her directorial debut for the Fire Hall Theatre. Anduin Kirkbride McElroy, also previously seen on stage in “Dracula” and “Five Women Wearing the Same Dress,” makes her backstage debut as Assistant Director. Porter’s wonderful two-level set and her staging of the actors make excellent use of the intimate Fire Hall stage.

Carrying the play confidently is eighth-grader Ryan Coudle King in the pivotal role of Eugene. Wendy Swerdlow Pederson and Kathy Coudle King are effective as his bickering mother and aunt Blanche, respectively, with Sam Ivory very strong as Eugene’s older brother Stanley. Amanda Zimmerman, seen often on stage at East Grand Forks Senior High School, turns in a fiercely believable performance as the headstrong Nora, and Carly Flaagan is good as her sister Laurie. Making a memorable stage debut is Jeff Weatherly as Jack, the harried family patriarch.

The play’s opening weekend saw a few issues with pacing and cues, but the actors quickly continued, delivering a very entertaining and sometimes moving interpretation of Simon’s classic play.

Classes are over for the semester and Monday is already the first day of the two-week moviemaking workshop for adults 18 and older that North Dakota playwright Kathy King and I are doing at UND this month. It’s still not too late to register for either or both weeks, but space is very limited. More information is online at http://www.english.und.edu/moviemaking.htm.

Sessions start at 6 pm each evening. May 12-13-14 will be the screenwriting portion, led by Kathy. The rest of the week students who are in both sessions can start planning how they will shoot the scripts they’ve just written. May 19 through 23, also at 6 pm nightly, I will go over production and postproduction basics, and students will shoot and edit scripts from the first week’s session. Completed movies will screen at the Empire Arts Center on Sunday afternoon, June 29, along with the movies created by the June UND moviemaking camp for teens (which will be held the afternoons of June 9-20).
The main reason that the screenwriting week of the May workshop does not meet on Thursday or Friday is that Kathy King is also in the cast of the current production by the Greater Grand Forks Community Theatre.

If You Go

WHAT: Brighton Beach Memoirs
WHERE:  Fire Hall Theatre, Grand Forks
WHEN: May 8-10 & 15-17, 7:30pm;
Sun., May 11, 2:30pm
HOW MUCH: $15, $18
INFO: (701) 746-0847