KRCB-FM: Second Row Center

Pulitzer Prize-winning dramas hit North Bay stages, first with the Raven Players production of Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers. Simon, whose best-known works are comedies tinged with a little melancholy (The Odd Couple, The Sunshine Boys) won the 1991 Pulitzer for Yonkers, which is a melancholy family drama tinged with comedy. With their mother deceased and their father off to work to pay off a loan shark he owes for covering his late wife’s medical bills, Jay (Ari Votzaitis) and Arty (Logan Warren) find themselves living for ten months in 1942 with their tyrannical grandmother (Trish DeBaun) and their mentally-challenged Aunt Bella (Priscilla Locke) in Yonkers, New York. Grandma Kurnitz is cold, demanding, and unable to express affection of any kind. She does not want the children there, but Bella does. The battle is on, first between Kurnitz and her grandchildren, but ultimately between mother and daughter. Director Joe Gellura has a strong ensemble at work in this piece with laughs generated by Warren