Word: scripting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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NEIL Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs is a bittersweet comedy about a Jewish family, based loosely on Simon's own, living in Depression-era Brooklyn. It can be a very enjoyable and heart-wrenching play, but the current Mather House production doesn't live up to the script's potential...
Jack and Stanley have two father-son talks--one regarding Stanley's near loss of a job, and one regarding Stanley's gambling away his salary. Admittedly, the latter is a weak moment in the script, but the slow, word-minced, unemotional exchange between Frost and Herzstein reflects neither the son's penitence and rededication to the family nor the father's pervading concern about his overseas relatives and the possibility that they might be coming to live in his already cramped quarters...
Despite the entertaining performances of several cast members, Brighton is not a great show. But what mars the production as much as flaws in the performances or the script is the theater space. The Mather TV Room is not meant to seat the 75 to 100 people allowed into each performance. The overcrowded house significantly detracts from the viewing experience, particularly when half your view of the stage is obscured by other audience members. Packing in an audience to the point of cramped discomfort for such an intimate play is an oversight on the part of the producers...
Loos' one marriage, to collaborator John Emerson, was long and unhappy. Mr. E, as she called him, was relegated to becoming Mr. Loos after Anita began garnering acclaim on her own. But at the beginning of Anita's career, Mr. E.'s name on a script was probably instrumental in selling projects to male producers. And Anita also used Mr. E. to intercede with some who were uncomfortable with having a woman in charge. Carey avoids the issue of sexism by deriding Emerson rather than the Hollywood system...
...Loos did submit her first script under the gender neutral name of A. Loos because she had heard that male writers get paid better. And throughout her career, Loos was at the mercy of the whims and prejudices of the producers, almost exclusively male, who ran Hollywood and Broadway...