Lake Worth Playhouse today

Come to the Lake Worth Playhouse in Lake Worth Beach to see the first third of Neil Simon’s bittersweet, semi-autobiographical trilogy.

It is 1937 and Simon lives with his family in this coming-of-age story in a crowded, lower middle-class Brooklyn walk-up.

Matinees start at 2 p.m. and evening performances start at 8 p.m. The play runs Nov. 22 -Dec. 1 and is approximately two hours long including a 15 minute intermission.

Part one of Neil Simon’s autobiographical trilogy: a portrait of the writer as a young teen in 1937 living with his family in a crowded, lower middle-class Brooklyn walk-up. Eugene Jerome, standing in for the author, is the narrator and central character.

Dreaming of baseball and girls, Eugene must cope with the mundane existence of his family life in Brooklyn: formidable mother, overworked father, and his worldly older brother Stanley. Throw into the mix his widowed Aunt Blanche, her two young (but rapidly aging) daughters and you have a recipe for hilarity, served up Simon-style.

This bittersweet memoir evocatively captures the life of a struggling Jewish household where, as his father states “if you didn’t have a problem, you wouldn’t be living here.”