The remarkable Mike Nussbaum lets loose in 'Broadway Bound'
THEATER REVIEW: "Broadway Bound," Drury Lane Theatre, Oakbrook Terrace. ★★★
The Drury Lane Theatre's new production of Neil Simon's "Broadway Bound" contains, all things considered, one of the most remarkable comedic performances I think I've ever seen.
It comes from Mike Nussbaum, who plays Ben, the dry and curmudgeonly Jewish grandfather in Simon's autobiographical coming-of-age story set in Brighton Beach, NY. Eugene, the hero of the piece and Simon's alter-ego, is a young man in the late 1940s on the cusp of finally leaving home with his brother for big careers as a comedy-writing double act. Grandfather Ben, that old socialist from the Old World, Simon's script tells us, is 77. Nussbaum is obliged to dig deep and play a character a good decade younger than himself.
I recognize that, for regular theatergoers and readers, the information that Nussbaum is still among this city's most vital, skilled and moving actors is not news. I recognize further that many people who are close to 90 remain physically vital and in tiptop mental shape, and that to express any special admiration for that feat risks the whiff of condescension. Well, to heck with that. What Nussbaum is doing here — scurrying up stairs, running around the stage, roaring, murmuring, kvetching, quietly delivering Simon's famous one-liners with exquisite comic timing — is simply remarkable. If it were happening on Broadway, it would be on front pages. If it were happening on-screen, there would be tributes at Cannes. So it's happening in Oakbrook Terrace. And that's perhaps why it's so darn fine and so darn real.
This is not only a perfect technical performance — I don't think Nussbaum blew one single syllable or one single beat Thursday night — but it is underpinned by precisely the right blend of warm sentiment and unstinting sadness that this carefully toned play, a true dramedy and inarguably one of Simon's best, demands. In this production, Ben is the moral conscience of all that we see. And, just as significantly, he gets almost all the laughs.
Nussbaum is not the only reason to see David New's production, an occasionally uneven staging that nonetheless benefits from some superb performances that take place on Collette Pollard's richly expansive, two-story setting.
The other standout here is the actor Richard McWilliams, who plays Jack, the 55-year-old father of Eugene (Max Polski) and Stanley (Jason Karasev), and a tortured man in the full throws of the kind of midlife crisis that comes when you've worked yourself to the bone every day to raise your kids and are now staring at them walking out the door and wondering what remains. The scenes between the unstinting McWilliams and the similarly determined Carmen Roman, who plays the matriarch Kate as a woman wound tight by unexpressed feelings, are blisteringly painful. So is the scene where Nussbaum's Ben confronts his son-in-law, only to discover the weakness of his own moral case. I found it riveting and deeply moving (there's also a majestic performance of quiet sadness from Paula Scrofano, who plays a member of the family who married rich but set herself adrift).
But ever since this play opened on Broadway in 1986, "Broadway Bound" (the final piece of the so-called "Eugene trilogy," also made up of "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "Biloxi Blues") has been rightly perceived as Eugene's play. And it's here that New's production stutters. Simply put, Polski just doesn't develop the kind of relationship with the audience that the piece needs if we are to see these memories through his eyes. That's partly because this young actor doesn't grab control of the story, often demurring and looking away when we want to be led by him and to care about him, and it's partly because it feels like New didn't spend enough time on that crucial aspect of the proceedings. Karasev's determined Stanley dominates here — which occurs because Karasev is so energetic and honest, but also because the production doesn't create the necessary way into its own world, which has to come through Eugene.
The show is a bit like taking a profound, engaging tour with an overly reluctant guide, which I think Polski and New could fix if they put their heads together and glue together what are some magnificent individual scenes.
As it stands now, when Polski takes one last look, one last rushed look, around the room that he will never again call home, he seems to feel nothing. That makes no sense, especially given the grandfather therein.