It has been nearly 30 years since actor/director Jason Alexander, perhaps best known for his role as George Costanza on the TV series “Seinfeld,” appeared in the original New York production of Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound,” the third play in a trilogy that included “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and “Biloxi Blues.” Alexander played 28-year-old Stanley Jerome, the older of two brothers who still live with their middle-class Jewish family in Brooklyn and are bent on becoming a successful comedy-writing team. The action takes place in 1949, and the Jerome household also includes the boys’ parents, embroiled in a domestic war as their marriage is deteriorating, and the boys’ Socialist grandfather.
Alexander is now directing a production of the play at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles (through Sept. 21) and, thinking back to the original Broadway run, recalled that Simon, who had by then achieved phenomenal success with such comedies as “The Odd Couple,” “Plaza Suite,” “The Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” “The Sunshine Boys” and numerous others, was continually making revisions to the script during rehearsals but couldn’t bring himself to stay for the out-of-town tryouts.
“The play was so deeply personal for Neil,” Alexander explained, “and he was so agitated, nervous, about what he was revealing about his family that, within one or two performances out of town, he got so stressed out, he did not remain with us, and we really didn’t see him again until we got to New York.
“In this particular play, the disintegration of their marriage was revealed pretty much as it happened, or at least as it happened that he could understand. And he was always concerned that he had somehow betrayed a confidence, or betrayed their privacy or painted them in a light that was not positive.”
But Alexander disagrees with Simon’s assessment. “I actually think he did a wonderful job of portraying them realistically and having them do the distasteful and occasionally cruel things that they do, but still giving them enough character and enough material to be able to express themselves as imperfect people trying to find answers. I actually think it’s a very sympathetic portrayal of his parents.”
In fact, Alexander considers this to be Simon’s best play, though the author won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for another show, “Lost in Yonkers.” And even though he spent some two years performing in the Broadway production, Alexander said he has been able to approach the work with a fresh eye.
“The beautiful thing about theater,” he observed, “is that it is a living, breathing, organic thing. And every time you start a new project, it is entirely unique to itself, even if the material that you’re working from has been done before. So, the trick for me was to be able to see who the actors were that were in front of me, what their innate gifts are.”
He continued, “The really unique difference in this production from any that I’ve ever seen is the fact that we’re in a very small theater. So, when the audience walks through the door, they are walking into the living room of the Jerome house. And the experience of this play is very intimate.”
Alexander was 27 when the play was first performed, and he remembers that, at the time, he felt the show was mainly about the two brothers beginning their lives and coming into their talent, while the adult portions of the story were just filler.
Now that he’s almost 55, Alexander sees the conflict between the adults as the meat and potatoes of the play. “Nowadays, therapy — marriage therapy or couple therapy or just therapy — is a pretty common thing for people. But back then, they had no tools with which to examine what was happening to them. And to see them desperately and painfully lashing out at each other, grabbing for each other, trying to hold on to each other, trying to make things better, with the amount of grace and forgiveness and decency that all these characters have — it just moves me incredibly.”
Alexander, who is Jewish, as is Simon, also pointed out that there are almost no Jewish references in the play, even though all the characters are Jewish.
“One of the critiques of Neil is that he writes Jewish characters and never cops to their Jewishness. And there is only one reference in this whole play to something about a synagogue. Other than that, there is nothing on the set that would indicate a Jewish house. What you’re hearing are the rhythms and the flavors and the music of Jewish-Italian neighborhoods at this time period in New York.
“It’s absolutely universal. If you brought people from countries where they’ve never seen New York, they’ve never seen a Jew or an Italian, or whatever, they would still understand this play, and they would still find themselves moved and charmed by it.”
He added that his underlying goal in reviving the play is to celebrate Simon, who he feels has gone somewhat out of vogue.
“It bothers me that Neil’s importance to the American theater is not celebrated. He is truly one of our greats.
“We seem to denigrate Neil Simon, and I think it’s a tragedy. So, I would love people to come in and look at this thing and go, ‘Oh, my God. I can’t believe the Neil Simon I think of wrote this. I didn’t know he had such ability to write characters of this depth and this complexity and this maturity.’ I want them to be surprised by how deeply engaged they become with Neil Simon’s writing, and to have them go out with a different respect for the man.”
“Broadway Bound,” Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. Performances are Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., through Sept. 21. (310) 477-2055, Ext. 2 or odysseytheatre.com
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