Neil Simon's Pulitzer Prize-winning, coming-of-age tale is set in New York with the focus on a dysfunctional family spanning three generations. Jay (Jos Slovick) and Arty (Keith Ramsay) reluctantly find themselves left in the care of their cantankerous Grandma Kurnitz (Bernice Stegers, pictured right) and their sweet, ditzy Aunt Bella (Laura Howard) while their father Eddie (Jonathan Tafler) travels the country trying to earn enough money to repay the family's considerable debt. We soon realise that growing up with Grandma has never been easy as we learn more about loveable Bella and meet the glamourous but intimidating racketeer Uncle Louie (Nitzan Sharron) and nervous Aunt Gert (Polly Conway).

Laura Howard as Bella is particularly commendable with a beautifully sensitive and emotionally deep performance that moves her beyond the stereotype of many of Simon's characters and Jos Slovick and Keith Ramsay are convincing as the brothers that find themselves discovering the family's hidden secrets. Unfortunately, Bernice Stegers' over-stated portrayal of Grandma Kurnitz's guarded character is often bordering on cliché and hollow, Polly Conway also fails to impress.

However, Nitzan Sharron shows depth with flashes of vulnerability and humanity from beneath his tough movie-gangster exterior, while designer James Perkins captures the claustrophobic atmosphere of the family apartment above Kurnitz's Kandy Store evocatively.

Like much of Simon's work this play treads a tender area between tragedy and comedy, often with the pain of the unspoken resonating deeper than the words that are articulated. With a recurring theme of survival, Lost In Yonkers is less a tale of happy families and more a bitter-sweet testimony to tenacity, but this production left me feeling a little lost.

Karalyne Chalmers