Synopsis |
The time is shortly after the end of World War II.
Brothers Stanley and Eugene have both been soldiers and
are now home with their parents in their Brooklyn house.
Aunt Blanche has long ago left the house, and married a
man who has gone on to great business success. She is now
very wealthy. Kate resents her sister's good fortune and
it is one of the sources of tension between them.
Meanwhile, the somewhat senile grandfather Ben now lives
with the family. He is an old socialist and can be lucid
for long moments during the play. Jack has had an affair
with a woman of greater education and level of culture than
Kate, and Kate finds out about it during the play. In one
of the show's big scenes, Eugene talks to Kate about her
past, and she tells him about once dancing with movie star
George Raft while he was still a young man in Brooklyn,
before he made it in Hollywood. Played against all this is
the growing success of Stan and Eugene in show business,
writing comedy routines for a radio program broadcast in
Manhattan. Another big scene is when their first comedy
skit airs on the radio, with the family members listening,
and becoming upset to hear a comic rendition of their
personal trials and tribulations The sketch is a take on a
Brooklyn family, much like their own (and Neil Simon's, in
this autobiographical comedy.) |