With high school students and other community supporters lined up along the finish line, Jacob Daugherty was nervous to make his way across. The cheering line o
Brrrr! The weather forecast calls for a low temperature near 20° the night before Lawrence’s annual polar plunge. Lawrence High School teacher Susie Mička just hopes organizers won’t need an ice axe to clear the frigid water for Sunday’s event.
Their mother has died and their father thinks he might be able to find work in the war industries of the South, and so Jay and Arty go to live with their grandmother in Yonkers in the opening moments of Neil Simon s Lost in Yonkers. This is a fairly standard opening for Simon, who often sees life through the wide-open eyes of teenage boys. But the film of Simon s Broadway play has a special quality to it. All of the performances are good, but one of them, by Mercedes Ruehl, casts a glow over the entire film.
Advertisement
Ruehl plays Aunt Bella, the daffy, movie-loving younger daughter of the formidable Grandma (Irene Worth). There is a possibility, subscribed to by everybody but never quite put into words, that she is mentally ill. She s certainly flighty. She overflows with enthusiasms, and then is brought low by tormenting doubts, and her optimism has hard sailing into the gales of Grandma s scorn.