About the Play:

Winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and 1991 Tony Award for Best Play

Lost in Yonkers has long been a favourite of acting teachers for female monologues and female/female scenes.

Lost in Yonkers is a full-length comedic drama by Neil Simon. What happens to children in the absence of love? That is the question that lies at the heart of this funny and heartrending play by one of America's most acclaimed and beloved playwrights. New York Post declared it, "The best play Simon ever wrote."

Lost in Yonkers is about multi-generational domestic conflict and the cruelties and painful memories that scar a family. It Yonkers, New York in 1942, after the death of their mother, two young brothers are sent to stay with their formidable grandmother for the longest ten months of their lives. For Grandmother Kurnitz is a one-woman German front — a refugee and a widow who has steeled her heart against the world. Her coldness and intolerance have crippled her own children: the boys' ne'r do-well father has no self-esteem ... he is financially strapped and taking to the road as a salesman ... their Aunt Gert has an embarrassing speech impediment ... their Uncle Louie is a small-time gangster ... and their Aunt Bella is 35-years-old, but has the mentality of a child. Yet it is Bella's hunger for affection and her refusal to be denied love that saves the boys — and that leads to an unforgettable, wrenching confrontation with her mother. Filled with laughter, tears, and insight, Lost in Yonkers is celebrated as one of Neil Simon's greatest works and is another heartwarming testament to his talent.

Lost in Yonkers had a pre-Broadway engagement in 1990 at The Center for the Performing Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This production subsequently premiered at the Richard Rogers Theater and ran for two years on Broadway, winning both won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for Best Play. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional repertory, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 3 female, 4 male

What people say:

"Neil Simon has done it again, with a craftmanship and skill probably unmatched in the contemporary English-speaking theater." — New York Post

"Broadway desperately needs a comedy, a drama, and a hit. With Lost in Yonkers, Mr. Simon has given us all three." — Wall Street Journal

"One of Simon's most impressive and funniest plays." — News York Daily News

"Laughter and tears have come together in a new emotional truth. There are moments in this play when you experience a new kind of laughter for Simon, a silent laughter that doesn't explode into a yuk but implodes straight into your heart." — Newsweek

Neil Simon (1927-2018) was America's most prolific playwright. He had dozens of plays and nearly as many major motion pictures produced. He was showered with more Academy and Tony nominations than any other writer, and is the only playwright to have four Broadway productions running simultaneously. His plays have been produced in dozens of languages, and have been blockbuster hits from Beijing to Moscow. His true success, however, is in his unique way of exposing something real in the American spirit.