Winner of a Tony award for Best Play. This is Chapter Two in the trilogy of Eugene Morris Jerome, alter ego of the youthful Neil Simon (First Chapter is Brighton Beach Memories and Third Chapter is Broadway Bound). When we last met Eugene, he was coping with adolescence in the 1930’s in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Here, he is young army recruit during the Second World War, going through his basic training, learning more about Life, and generally developing his Writer’s Sensibility at boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1943. He is still jotting down his memoirs. Eugene and five other assorted enlisted men suffer under a hard nosed D.I., confront the daily “mess” served up in the mess hall, join together in a visit to a local prostitute and, generally, Become Adults. For the first time, Eugene confronts the degradation of anti-Semitism; and, for the first time, he falls in love. Then, his training over, it is goodbye Biloxi.
