Brighton Beach Memoirs

Neil Simon's autobiographical play, a Jewish Dear Octopus, makes for mildly diverting comedy in overexposed terrain. 15-year-old Eugene (Silverman) is the tour guide of his Brooklyn household, staring into the camera and commentating. His adolescent fantasies of sex and baseball are continually interrupted by his mother (Danner), who keeps him running errands. Danner does what she can with the stereotype between cooking, tidying and kvetching, while dad (Dishy) overworks, worries about Hitler, and denies that he's a saint. All social life revolves around the liver-and-cabbage, all unsocial life around the bathroom. All grievances come to a head dramatically, but blood is the rap you can't beat.