You win some you lose some.
First of all, I'm only mildly amused by Neil Simon plays to begin with, so I'm not sure why I chose to attend this performance. I probably have seen the movie back in the '80s, but to tell you the truth I get it mixed up with Biloxi Blues which starred one of my favorite actors Matthew Broderick. That one is in the same family of plays Simon did that depict a semi-autobiographical working class Jewish family living in Brooklyn just before and during World War II. Chose not to read any plots synopsis to avoid spoilers. In fact, I should have. I would have realized that the plot revolves entirely around one family and the interactions of the various family members, struggling through hardships yet loving one another through thick and thin. Oh brother, this is not my kind of story. I literally could care less about this kind of thing.
I got further worried when I pulled into the parking lot 15 minutes before the start of the play and there were plenty of spaces. Sure enough, I looked around the theater at curtain call and it was maybe half full. On a Saturday night. In Sebring where there's nothing else to do. Not a good sign.
New director came out on stage at the top of the show and warned us about the adult language and themes. What is it with this theater thinking that people in their 60s and 70s haven't heard it all before? The roughest the play got was in dialogue about teenboy fascination with boobies, some brotherly talk about masturbation and precisely one swear word, s***. I'll leave it censored like you see it. You should be able to figure out what it is but I like that my speech to text software is like this director, protecting our virgin ears.
Now let me also state that this wasn't Rollins College-esque. It wasn't that bad. But the director is young, the actors are young, well except the dude play the dad. And of course I'm pretty sure the closest any of them ever came to a New York Jew was probably ordering a pastrami on rye from Jersey Mike's. The acting was okay, but with this intensely dialogue heavy play, it would be inevitable that even a seasoned actor would sound like they are rattling off their lines since the volume of them must have been daunting to learn.
The kid playing Eugene was comically "family" which made it really hard to believe his character's fascination with female anatomy. The ladies of the cast all sounded exactly the same, some with slightly higher pitch, some with a little bit lower, but all of them doing their best (albeit toned down) impersonation of Fran Drescher as The Nanny.
As you remember from the last review I did of a performance here, the troupe is down a permanent director. The girl directing this said she was 24. And it shows.
On a slightly positive note, as you can see in the pic above, the set looked okay, and the costuming was decent. Nevertheless, maybe I chuckled once or twice but it was almost like I was trying to show that I wasn't one of these Easter Island types that just sit there emotionless. I really wasn't feeling it. All the jokes seemed to fall short of their mark.
Because of the rote line reading style, comedic timing was totally non-existent. To confirm this, I just now took a look at a few snips of a video of Jason Schwartzman from the 1986 movie version, and he was actually pretty darn good, more than a chuckle there.
So yeah, when the lights went up for intermission, I made my way out of there. Like most of this family, I really don't like the liver and cabbage dinner this theater was serving me. But not having anyone's feelings I wouldn't want hurt, there was no stopping me.