Lost in Issaquah

Posted by dorothywilhelm in Theater. Tagged: Lost in Yonkers, Odd Couple, Simon, Theater. Leave a Comment |Edit

Today my daughter and I drove up to the quaint, small town of Issaquah, Washington to see a production of Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers. It’s about a sixty five mile drive from my little town of DuPont. And the traffic was dreadful the whole way. We had just minutes to spare by the time we arrived at the theater, so I hurried to get our tickets at Will Call, and Gina went on to park the car. When the last call to be seated came, she was still looking for a parking place. I’m pretty sure that a good mother would have waited out in front of the theater with tickets in hand. But I’m semi-ashamed to say that I left her ticket with an usher and went in to see the start of the show. After all, I needed to tell her how the play began.

I suppose Neil Simon is my favorite comedy playwright and certainly Lost in Yonkers is my favorite of his plays (though the Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park, and the Brighton Beach Trilogy run a close second, third, and fourth.) What I like about Yonkers is that Simon manages to deal with terrible human loss and many complex issues in a way that’s often hysterically funny.

The daughter who accompanied me to the play is an actor. She appears in many productions in the Seattle area. Last year she was in a production of The Wizard of Oz in which she played The Wicked Witch of the West, a plum part (a green plum). But I found out a surprising thing. Nothing in life prepares you to see your child melt. Even when you knew it was coming.