EastEnders director at Watford Palace Theatre (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

EastEnders director at Watford Palace Theatre

9:36am Friday 29th January 2010 in

More stories about: Watford Palace Theatre

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EASTENDERS director Jennie Darnell describes Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs as a family drama in which the characters are “screaming one minute and hugging the next”, which should feel like familiar territory to her after the shenanigans of Albert Square. Jennie has also just completed directing EastEnders Last Tango in Walford, 25th Anniversary DVD.

“It just happens this play focuses on the family as it does in the soap,” says Jennie. “Both are intricately involved in the drama of human beings played out in a domestic way. It’s a charming and very affecting play. At some times you’re laughing and the next moment it’s a heavier piece of drama.”

For Watford Palace Theatre’s production, which opens on February 5, she is staying true to the original setting. Simon’s largely autobiographical play focuses on an immigrant Jewish family in Brooklyn during the late 1930s. Told through the eyes of 14-year-old Eugene Jerome, this humorous coming of age story plays out against a backdrop of economic recession and the threat of war.

“It was an absorbing time,” Jennie says. “There was a migration from Poland and Russia to New York.

It really captures that sense of a family living on top of each other and that sense of paper thin walls and no privacy

Jennie Darnell

“I came across some fabulous books researching what it was like to be in Brooklyn and in the Jewish neighbourhoods of that time. They describe the houses, the smells, the tastes and the culture.”

To take the audience into that time and place Jennie says she has been listening to the likes of Billie Holiday, Tommy Dorsey, the Andrews Sisters and the Yiddish American Orchestra. Jonathan Fensom’s set also had to recreate how families lived cheek by jowl in the immigrant district.

“It really captures that sense of a family living on top of each other and that sense of paper thin walls and no privacy. That’s why Eugene puts down his private thoughts about seeing his cousin naked and his hopes for the Yankees in his book.”

Brighton Beach Memoirs premiered on Broadway in 1983, winning a Tony Award for Best Director, a New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play and a Tony Award for its lead actor, Matthew Broderick, who also starred in the 1986 film version.

Casting Eugene is critical to the play. Ryan Sampson who plays Eugene will be most memorable to audiences for his role as Alex in the TV series After You’ve Gone with Nicholas Lyndhurst.

“It’s most important that he’s likeable and you enjoy spending time with him. I didn’t want it to be someone who didn’t have a keen understanding of the journey the character is on or be reductive about what it is to lust after a girl. We were not just looking for the cute and flip; his likeability has to be natural.”

The play is at Watford Palace Theatre from February 5 to 27. Tickets: 01923 225671