By Dale King
Delray Beach Playhouse continues to hitch its wagon to Neil Simon’s star as it opens its 69th season with the famed playwright’s first Broadway comedy hit, Come Blow Your Horn. It closes with a matinee Sunday.
The Playhouse closed its 2014-2015 season with back-to-back Simon works: They’re Playing our Song, the Marvin Hamlisch-Carol Bayer Sager collaboration based on a Simon book, then ended with Barefoot in the Park.
A multitude of newcomers to the Delray stage joins local stage veteran Mark Hetelson to bring Simon’s premiere work to life. And what a lively life they give it, engendering plenty of laughs. They prove Come Blow Your Horn is neither outdated nor festooned with cobwebs.
Simon fans know the writer loves to dabble in autobiography – and it’s pretty obvious in Come Blow Your Horn. Neil Simon is embodied in the character of 21-year-old Buddy Baker, a naïve, bespectacled youth who shows up at the door of his older brother, Alan’s, apartment in New York City. Alan (who, in real life, was Simon’s brother, Danny) lives a pretty bohemian lifestyle. Girls are his main interest, work his least, even though he’s got pretty certain employment in his father’s wax fruit factory.
The show is pretty formulaic, particularly to fans of the prolific playwright. But the players make the dialogue sing with humor. Simon’s quips, even early on, are sharp and make for entertaining theater.
The script creates a nice rapport between Alan and Buddy, even as their roles begin to flip. Later in the production, Alan discovers real feelings for one of the women he is romancing after she leaves him. This juxtaposes Alan’s true, inner hunger for companionship with Buddy’s discovery that he can easily become a ladies’ man if he just follows his brother’s lead. It actually becomes too easy for Buddy to play the ladies.
Of course, the fact that Buddy has left home to live with his brother rankles both his mother and father. They show up at various times to wrest their younger boy from the clutches of his playboy brother. This is where Hetelson, as the father, and Barbara Feldman, as the mother, show their true acting skills.
Both manifest slow-burn anger manifestations. When dad arrives at Alan’s place, you can almost see the steam gushing from his ears. Dad wants his sons to stay at his wax fruit business, noting that the world can change, but “wax fruit lays in a bowl till you’re 100.”
Feldman, who makes her Delray Playhouse debut in his play, but has a résumé of stage, TV and film credits, is probably responsible for the most non-stop laughs when she shows up at Alan’s and finds herself alone to answer a slew of back-to-back phone calls from people she doesn’t know, asking about things she doesn’t understand. She cranks up her frustration level, to the delight audience’s delight.
In many ways, Come Blow Your Horn is a product of its time — a stage version of a situation comedy, right down to the pat ending. The 1961 show that became a 1963 film starring Frank Sinatra is also spiced with the author’s droll sense of humor and demonstrates his ability to create comic scenarios that build to a climax, like mom’s telephone escapades.
We know that Hetelson is adept at playing the cranky curmudgeon, but it’s obvious Feldman also does well in this department.
Hetelson did take a couple of departures from comedy last season, playing a criminal in Wait until Dark and a money-hungry lawyer in Other People’s Money. It’s good to see him back as a humorist.
Feldman excellently transposes some of her talents from such shows as The Sopranos, 30 Rock, Law & Order and Third Watch to the local stage.
Portraying the brothers with touching chemistry are Nando Cuccurese as Buddy and Eric Schultz as Alan. When Cuccurese first appears, he is wearing Clark Kent-style glasses and a black suit (“not black, charcoal,” he protests), indications that he may be terminally shy. But his metamorphosis soon erases that notion.
Schultz is talented as a smooth-talking lover boy who’s obviously in charge of his relationships with women. The actor’s moves seem effortless as he changes from carefree to needy and, in the end, satisfied with his lifestyle decision.
Leslie Kandel, who plays Connie, has the demeanor of a woman who knows what she wants and won’t take stringing along for an answer. She seems comfortable in her first performance on the Delray Stage, having performed in Hairspray and Gypsy at the Levis JCC in Boca.
Gracie Connell does a fine job portraying Peggy, another of Alan’s ladies. She’s funny and effervescent in a role that’s sort of relegated to the first act.
Randolph DelLago is back for his umpteenth season as Playhouse boss as well as show director. Cindi Taylor also returns as scenic designer, creating a comfortable Manhattan apartment on stage — one that would probably rent for more than $30 a month today.
Come Blow Your Horn closes with a 2 p.m. show Sunday at the Delray Beach Playhouse, 950 NW 9th St. (Lake Shore Drive), Delray Beach. For tickets, call 561-272-1281, extension 4.