Gaithersburg’s Arts Barn Presents Brighton Beach Memoirs

In partnership with Sandy Spring Theater Group, Arts on the Green presents Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, an autobiography of the writer as a young teen. The show runs now through May 24, with performances on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. at the Arts Barn, 311 Kent Square Road. Admission is $20, $12 for children 14 and under. For tickets and information call 301.258.6394 or visit the Gaithersburg website.

Brighton Beach Memoirs is the first of Neil Simon’s autobiographies depicting the writer as a young teen in 1937 living with his family in a crowded, lower middle-class Brooklyn walk-up. Eugene Jerome, standing in for the author, is the narrator and central character. Dreaming of baseball and girls, Eugene must cope with the mundane existence of his family life in Brooklyn: formidable mother, overworked father, and his worldly older brother Stanley. Throw into the mix his widowed Aunt Blanche, her two young (but rapidly aging) daughters and you have a recipe for hilarity, served up Simon-style. This bittersweet memoir evocatively captures the life of a struggling Jewish household where, as his father states ‘if you didn’t have a problem, you wouldn’t be living here.’

Schedule of Performances:

Friday, May 15 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, May 16 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, May 17 at 2 p.m.
Friday, May 22 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, May 23 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, May 24 at 2 p.m.

Directed by Bill Spitz; Produced by Honey Cohen and L-N Gabel.

The cast features (in order of appearance):
Eugene – Danny Santiago
Kate – Mara Bayewitz
Blanche – Karen Winokur
Laurie – Lydia Levy
Nora – Callie Etches
Stanley – Joe Myers
Jack – William Cassidy

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