By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com
Starting this Thursday, Main Street Productions (MSP) is taking audiences back to 1942 in the Neil Simon hit, Lost In Yonkers, staging at Basile Westfield Playhouse, 220 N. Union St., Westfield.
Director Jen Otterman was not inclined to talk about the story itself, instead referring The Reporter to various online summaries. Rather than send our readers on that quest, here is what MSP’s website has to say about the plot:
Set in Yonkers in 1942, this memory play is about Bella, who is thirty-five years old, mentally challenged, and living at home with her mother, stern Grandma Kurnitz. As the play opens, ne’er-do-well son Eddie deposits his two young sons on the old lady’s doorstep. He is financially strapped and taking to the road as a salesman. The boys are left to contend with Grandma, with Bella and her secret romance, and with Louie, her brother, a small-time hoodlum in a strange new world called Yonkers.
“I think I hear someone talking about that new play at Basile Westfield Playhouse. Yonkers? Where the heck is Yonkers? I feel so lost!” (Photo by Rob Slaven / IndyGhostLight.com)
When asked why she wanted to direct this particular show, Otterman told The Reporter, “I submitted two shows. I submitted this one and The Boys Next Door, and this is the one they [MSP’s board] selected.”
Otterman’s connection with the show goes back decades.
“I just love the show because it’s an accurate depiction of life the ups and downs of life,” Otterman said. “I’ve actually worked it twice before. I taught high school at Hamilton Southeastern in speech and theater for 30 years. I directed it and then later I used to act at the Red Barn Summer Theatre in Frankfort, Ind., and I acted the part of the grandmother in that production.”
One of the actors in this production, Becca Bartley, has an equally long association with the play. Having portrayed the role of Bella under Otterman’s direction in high school, now she’s playing the same role for the same director.
Otterman could not, however, tell The Reporter how well her cast has come together off stage.
“I’m not backstage a lot so I can’t really tell you whether they gelled or not,” Otterman said. “I only care really that they gelled in the show. I have a semi-professional theater background, so I am not one of the community people who’s like, ‘Oh, let’s go have fun.’ I’m more about ‘the fun is in the creative process of sculpting a really fabulous show. I mean, they seem like they like each other when they’re out front with me.”
On stage, Otterman told The Reporter her cast still had some work to do before they can be ready for opening night.
“They’re not there yet,” Otterman said last Monday. “We open a week from Thursday, so they’re getting there.”
If history is any indicator, everything will come together just fine. MSP always puts on a good show that keeps audiences coming back for more.
You can see Lost In Yonkers at Basile Westfield Playhouse, 220 N. Union St., Westfield, from Feb. 8 to 18. Go to WestfieldPlayhouse.org/showstickets or call (317) 402-3341 for tickets.