Not too many playwrights – as in ZERO, as in NADA – get a Broadway theatre named for them while they’re still alive.
Neil Simon’s plays were hits (putting it mildly). Over the course of his career, his plays generated fifty – yes, you heard right – Tony nominations for actors. This is an unbeatable record. For many reasons. The industry has changed so much. The stakes are too high. Cats runs for 25 years. Movies are turned into musicals. Ticket prices are astronomical. But still: FIFTY Tony noms. It won’t ever be topped.
If memory serves, Brighton Beach Memoirs was my second Broadway show. I was in middle school. Or maybe first or second year of high school? And War Games had come out and I BURNED and YEARNED for Matthew Broderick. If you’re an actor, or want to be an actor, you are well-versed in Neil Simon, even when you’re young. He helps you learn how to do comedy. The jokes are airtight. (This is one of the reasons why some people didn’t like his work. Pauline Kael, for one!) But anyway, at the same time War Games came out, Broderick was on Broadway making a huge splash in Brighton Beach Memoirs. Matthew Broderick was having a Very Big Year. So I did the legwork myself. I started the process in motion. I was a kid but I was like, “Okay. I have babysitting money. I am going to buy a ticket.” I didn’t live in New York, remember. I don’t remember how the ticket was bought – maybe I gave the money to my parents and they booked it for me – but I do vividly remember calling the actual box office and asking the poor lady who answered the phone, “Will Matthew Broderick still be doing the role next month?” At any rate, I got my wish. I took the train down, I stayed with my aunt, I saw the show, I was in total awe of him.
While I was in high school/college, I used the “pockets” monologue from Brighton Beach Memoirs as an audition piece. I still think it’s a lovely piece of writing.
Oh, God, I wish Daddy were alive. Oh, God, he was so handsome. Always dressed so dapper, his shoes always shined. I always thought he should have been a movie star…like Gary Cooper…only very short. Mostly I remember his pockets.
When I was six or seven he always brought me home a little surprise. Like a Hershey or a top. He’d tell me to go get it in his coat pocket. So I’d run to the closet and put my hand in and it felt as big as a tent. I wanted to crawl in there and go to sleep. And there were all these terrific things in there, like Juicy Fruit gum or Spearmint Life Savers and bits of cellophane and crumbled pieces of tobacco and movie stubs and nickels and pennies and rubber bands and paper clips and his grey suede gloves that he wore in the winter time.
Then I found his coat in Mom’s closet and I put my hand in the pocket. And everything was gone. It was emptied and dry-cleaned and it felt cold…And that’s when I knew he was really dead.
If you say it out loud, the monologue basically plays itself.
Rest in peace.
