Invisible Theatre Does A Nice Job With Neil Simon's 'Lost In Yonkers'. By Margaret Regan IT'S WARTIME, IT'S New York, it's a Jewish grandma's apartment. So if you're talking theatre--and we are--you're talking Neil Simon territory. Lost in Yonkers, now at Invisible Theatre in an entertaining new production, is vintage Simon. Careening between laugh-out-loud one-liners and emotional heartbreak, this play is about two motherless teenagers temporarily marooned at Grandma's place in the dark days of 1942. The boys' father (James Blair), in debt after his late wife's illness, is forced to take a job traveling the country to buy up scrap metal for Uncle Sam. Sharing cramped quarters above the family candy store with Grandma, a loopy aunt and a gangster uncle, the two boys try their best to negotiate their way in a home where games are not allowed and where it's more important to keep the doilies on straight than it is to indulge anybody's emotional needs. The play is essentially a celebration of the fierce family love that underlies this gang's perpetual squabbling, but it's also very funny. In time-tested Simon fashion, it's full of the classic Jewish humor that one Jewish-American wag recently dubbed Hebonics: "You don't like it here?" the hard-as-nails Grandma (Jetti Ames) demands of one of her cowed grandsons. "You should be living in Germany: You'd be dead already.'' Simon has had a lot of commercial success working and reworking this brand of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't humor, but he can be a manipulative writer. Addicted to the quick gag, in much of his work he dilutes his big emotional moments with wisecracks. It's as though he's afraid to give profound truth its due. Fortunately, though, in Lost in Yonkers and the other recent memory plays that draw on his own early life, Simon's writing is more heartfelt. Lost in Yonkers, which won the Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, is not just about quick and funny retorts: It's about the lifelong damage that damaged parents can do to their children. And the fine Invisible Theatre cast, gently directed by Gail Fitzhugh, does justice to its emotional demands, moving with suppleness from comedy to drama. It was a risk for Invisible Theatre to choose a work whose success depends on the skill of teenaged actors. But the young performers who play the exiled brothers are two of the best reasons to see this play. Nicholas Sean Gomez of Benson portrays Jay, the 16-year-old, and Zachary Miller of Tucson is Artie, the 13-year-old. They're on stage almost constantly during the two-act play, spinning comic riffs off each other, nuttily interacting with their batty relatives, showing flashes of vulnerability. Gomez registers a wide array of facial expressions: His Jay is a smart kid who does quick readings of the strange adults surrounding him, nimbly figuring out what each situation requires. Miller's character is undoubtedly the Simon stand-in, the young boy who is already using humor as a carapace to ward off the slings and arrows outrageous fortune has sent his way. In fact, both these characters are just a little too cool and clever for kids who have just lost their mother permanently and their father temporarily, but that's a fault of the writing. A surprise piece of casting is IT artistic director Susan Claassen as Bella, the sad young aunt who cringes under every nasty insult Grandma levels at her. Bella has some kind of brain damage, and she's a virtual slave to Grandma's whims, even while she longs for love and babies of her own. Claassen specializes in exuberantly eccentric characters, and she plays against type here, timidly contracting her body inward. The boys blossom under Bella's kindly attention, and one of the most touching moments in the play occurs when Jay loyally tries to help her find some happiness. Amy Lehmann does a fine comic turn in a small part as the gasping Gert, Grandma's other daughter. Gert's problem is that she can't breathe around her mother. Grandma is the most problematic character, and her viciousness is the play's central mystery. Uncle Louie (Jack Neubeck) gradually fills the boys in on her horrific childhood as a Jew in Germany, and her hard life as a young American widow who lost two of her six children. But her steely determination to make her way in a cruel world has done its own damage. She's a tough woman and that's how Ames plays her. In a sense, Grandma is the one lost in Yonkers, lost to happiness. The play just may be Simon's adult effort to excavate the tough love he is convinced burned beneath her thick skin. Lost in Yonkers continues through Sunday, February 9, at Invisible Theatre, 1400 N. First Ave. Performances are at 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, with 2 o'clock matinees on Sundays. Tickets are $12.50 and $15. For information and reservations call 882-9721.

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