‘Broadway Bound’ Review: Searching for Neil Simon - Terry Teachout Wall Street Journal
Oldcastle Theatre Company, a 46-year-old troupe headquartered in a 120-seat theater in downtown Bennington, is giving “Broadway Bound” an unusually effective staging by Eric Peterson, one that profits from the presence of a rock-solid cast. All six members are wholly believable in the roles of Eugene (Anthony J. Ingargiola), Simon’s fictional alter ego, and the extended family with which he lived in deepest Brooklyn. Best of all—if only by an inch or two—is Sarah Corey, who plays Eugene’s mother, a once-lively Jewish hausfrau whose spirit has been battered by the slow crumbling of her marriage to an angry, dark-souled husband (Jason Asprey) who is seeing another woman on the side. But everyone in this production is distinguished, as is Carl Sprague’s two-tiered set, a rewardingly detailed evocation of New York apartment life in the ’40s.
Neil Simon shines in Oldcastle's "Broadway Bound" - Jeffrey Borak
Few playwrights have written about family dynamics as insightfully and with such compassion as did Neil Simon in his Pulitzer Prize-winning "Lost in Yonkers" (1991) and even more specially in his 1987 "Broadway Bound," which is being given a deeply affecting, movingly funny, richly memorable production at Oldcastle Theatre Company under the knowing directorial hands of OTC's producing artistic director Eric Peterson and a cast of veteran actors who are each at the top of their form … Eugene (a thoroughly captivating Anthony J. Ingargiola) works in the stock room of a music company … And, in one of the evening's more sublime moments, choreographed by Ron Ray, Eugene responds by asking her to dance with him, which they do, taking the measure of the living room (part of a magnificently designed set by Carl Sprague) with effortless ease and style, as if they were familiar dance partners who have been at this for years; who know each other's every move without exchanging a word or false step or turn. It's an indelible moment in an indelible production.
Broadway Bound, by Neil Simon. Directed by Eric Peterson - J. Peter Bergman, Berkshire Bright Focus
As the brothers Jerome, Stanley and Eugene, Robbie Rescigno and Anthony J. Ingargiola behave like siblings should. They have a physicality and an emotional engagement that shows their closeness even when they are in total disagreement with one another … Ingargiola brings a sweetness and concern to Eugene, the Neil Simon character, that gives others he plays with opportunities to make him seem backward. He takes the stage, whenever Simon gives him the spotlight, and plants reality in the midst of fantasy-memory time. His interplay with Sarah Corey as his mother has a charm that is endearing. He is, by the way, the only non-Equity member of the company and the play belongs to him most of the time. What he brings is a beautiful rendition of a role meant to create a star. He does remarkably well.
