Pamela Moller Kareman has been laughing a lot lately.

That’s not to say that the director at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls isn’t taking her work seriously.

It’s just that she’s working on Neil Simon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Lost in Yonkers,” a story that mixes heart-rending scenes of familial dysfunction with laugh-out-loud comedy.

“Lost in Yonkers” comes at the end of a successful season at the Schoolhouse: from the world premiere of Todd Susman’s “Locked and Loaded,” about men making life-changing choices, to a stunning production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” that transferred to Manhattan for a month-long run to “Appointment with a High-Wire Lady,” about memory, love and loss, to Neil Simon.

“Lost in Yonkers” opens tonight and runs weekends through June 1 at the tiny theater in Croton Falls.

Neil Simon? At the Schoolhouse?

“We have discovered that this time slot for us, in the warmer, nice weather, brings in lots of interest from groups,” Kareman says.

“It’s a balance that everybody has in theater,” she says. “We want to do work that we’re interested in exploring, but we also want to please the crowd. It really was a lesson we learned with ‘The Last Night of Ballyhoo’ a few years back.”

“I reread it and thought it was Neil Simon at his most poignant and it’s still so funny,” she adds.

“Lost in Yonkers” is about two boys, Jay and Arty, whose father goes off to look for work and leaves them with their stern grandmother in a small apartment over the family’s candy store in 1942 Yonkers.

There are, of course, complications: a gangster uncle named Louie, an eccentric Aunt Gert who breathes out when she says the first half of a sentence and breathes in on the second half, and Bella, their simple-minded and sincere aunt who is a jumble of love, confusion and determination.

In addition to the Pulitzer, “Lost in Yonkers” won four Tonys in 1991 — for Best Actress (Mercedes Ruehl), Featured Actor (Kevin Spacey), Featured Actress (Irene Worth) and Best Play.

The story may be told by the boys, but Grandma Kurnitz is at the center of this household, a domineering voice of negativity and concern who never approved of the boys’ dead mother and made no effort to hide that fact. And she’s none too pleased to be saddled with two young boys in her apartment.

But Judy Stone, who plays the role created by Irene Worth on Broadway, has a very fine line to walk, Kareman says.

“She can be understandable, at least,” she says. “She may not be likable, but in some way you have to be able to understand how someone could be like this and have some kind of empathy if not sympathy for her.

“I jotted something down — I jot things down on napkins — and I found this, I’m not sure where, a description about the grandmother that reads; ‘Her steely monstrousness can be found in the emotions she withholds rather than in whatever faint feelings she might grudgingly express. She shows raw anguish as opposed to emotion.’ ”

Plenty to work with.

Casting was difficult — “We saw a lot of people,” Kareman says — and finding young actors to play Jay and Arty was particularly hard.

She struck gold when her friend, Sandy Faison, who teaches at La Guardia High School in the shadow of Lincoln Center, invited Kareman to teach a master class at the school. She met some great young actors and found La Guardia senior Gaspare di Blasi, the older brother.

For the younger brother, Arty, Kareman got reams of head shots from Westchester stage mothers, “but it wasn’t happening for me,” she recalls. What she was after was the quintessential Neil Simon kid — “an old man in a little guy’s body.” She cast Cody B. Kostro, who makes his professional debut at the Schoolhouse in this show.

“He’s just a hoot,” she says. “Last night, we had tech-dress and some of the crew people were seeing it for the first time and they were just roaring at the kid.”

Also in the cast are: Steve Perlmutter as Uncle Louie who drove to the Schoolhouse from Manhattan and phoned Kareman to suggest that he might actually have gotten lost in Yonkers; Marilyn Matarrese as Gert, who’s getting to dress in glamorous costumes for the role, and Katonah resident Bruce Sabath as the boys’ father, Eddie. Sabath was in the recent Broadway revival of “Company.”

Cheryl Orsini plays Bella, the role created by Tony-winner Ruehl. Her day job is as a waitress at Orso, the high-brow Restaurant Row eatery.

“After we began rehearsal, she’s waitressing and in comes Neil Simon and casting director Jay Binder,” Kareman says. “After waiting on them, she said ‘Thank you for writing such a lovely play. I’m thrilled to be playing Bella.’ And he was very gracious and warm and sweet.
“And they were on the way out and Jay Binder held back and came over to Cheryl and said ‘Don’t play her too retarded. That’s the ticket.’ ” Kareman says.
Simon has described Bella as a 15-year-old girl in a 38-year-old woman’s body, with a 38-year-old woman’s desires.

“And 15 is not 8,” Kareman says, emphasizing that she’s not a child, either. “And Cheryl brings an exuberance and an adolescence and struggle of who she is to the role. At one point, she asks her mother ‘Tell me who I am.

What’s wrong with me? Why am I like this? Help me understand myself.’

“And the mother is so cold. She says, ‘You want to know what you are? You’re a child. You’ll always be a child.’ And it’s so cruel.”

But there are plenty of moments of inspired comedy, comedy that goes to character, comedy that has Kareman and her cast laughing plenty.

At one point, Bella comes home and knocks on the door and Jay says ‘Guess who forgot how to open a door?’

He opens the door for her and Bella says “I forgot my key.”

When Jay asks how she got in the door downstairs, she says “I used my spare key.”

Cue the laughter.

‘Lost in Yonkers’
Where: Schoolhouse Theater, 3 Owens Road, Croton Falls.
When: 8 p.m. Thursdays to Saturdays and 4 p.m. Sundays through June 1.
Tickets: $25 on Thursdays and Fridays; $29 on Saturdays and Sundays.
Call: 914-277-8477.
With: Cheryl Orsini, Judy Stone, Gaspare di Blasi, Cody B. Kostro, Steve Perlmutter, Bruce Sabath, Marilyn Matarrese.

People – little girls, in particular – might come to Westchester Broadway Theatre’s production of “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast” wanting to see Belle, the pretty bookworm who yearns to escape her provincial little town.

And they will.

There’s the blue dress, then the yellow dress. Look! She has a book just like in the video!

Rena Strober is excellent in the role, a sweet presence at the heart of this story of love, loss, sacrifice and redemption. Her voice is clear, pure and unadorned. In short, she’s every bit of what the part demands.

Joseph Mahowald as the Beast – an actor practically invisible under wigs and prosthetic makeup pieces – also sings loud and clear. His Beast runs the gamut of emotions, anger to confusion to vulnerability. Yes, this Beast has feelings.

Still, there’s not much singing for the Beast, which makes Mahowald’s Act 1 closer – “If I Can’t Love Her” – all the more of a revelation.

After covering a lot of ground – from his lair through the castle to a parapet on the castle’s roof in Peter Barbieri Jr.’s lovely set – he covers just as much emotional ground. And his final note, held for what seems an eternity, had a preview audience chatting in wonder through the intermission.

But the performances of the title characters are really just the start: Enchantment lies behind the thick glass doors of the dinner theater.

Take a memo.

Dear White Plains Performing Arts Center:

Loved your first season of classic musicals, from “Man of La Mancha,” to the splendid “Ragtime,” to the finger-popping “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

The emergence of your professional theater has been a happy development, giving theatergoers yet another alternative to high-priced Broadway shows and the attendant headaches of parking and traffic.

The final musical of your first season is a personal favorite: “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” The Pulitzer Prize-winner, and Tony-winner for Best Musical, has some wonderful numbers and opportunities for fine performances, and it skewers corporate America in a clever but not malicious way.

Your director, Eleanor Reissa, has a first-rate cast, from Matthew Wilson as J. Pierrepont Finch (“that’s F-I-N-C-H”) to longtime Westchester resident Nick Wyman as the blustery but decisive J.B. Biggley, to the women in their lives: Patricia Noonan as secretary Rosemary Pilkington and the hilarious Jill Abramovitz as Hedy, Biggley’s girl on the side. The ensemble is noteworthy, each helping to create that corporate world of which Finch wants so desperately to be a part.

And it was a great touch to have the voice-overs of Finch’s guidebook done by Tony-winner David Hyde Pierce.

Playwright Howard Meyer says he tends to ruminate with his plays, drawing on experiences he’s had and people he’s met over the course of years.

He’ll work on them for a few months and shelve them and then come back at them with new eyes.

For his latest play, “AngelBeast,” which gets a gala Opening Night tonight for a four-weekend run at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Pleasantville, Meyer – co-founder and artistic director of Pleasantville’s Axial Theatre – drew on two experiences he had while teaching.

For a couple of years, he taught playwriting to inmates at Sing Sing prison. Under the auspices of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program, Meyer met with small groups of men in the maximum-security prison in Ossining, teaching them to express themselves through writing, plays in particular.

Setting foot in the prison scared him at first, he says, but over time his attitude changed.

“It was a profound experience of getting to know these guys and coming to like a lot of them and having a connection with a lot of them,” he says.

“We looked at their writing but also got to talk about their pasts. And often (their behavior was shaped) because of abusive homes or broken homes or falling into gang situations.”

“Pure Heaven: A Party with Kay Thompson,” the spring mainstage production at Mamaroneck’s Emelin Theater, has been through the theatrical equivalent of pure hell — and has been postponed till next fall, a representative for the theater said today.

According to publicist Brian Shimkovitz of Manhattan’s Sacks & Co. — which represents the theater — playwright and actress Ruth Williamson did two preview performances last week but then suffered nerve damage to her vocal chords that forced the postponing of last weekend’s performances.

illiamson had hoped to rally for tomorrow night’s gala opening, but a second medical opinion ordered the actress into six weeks of voice rest. Director Michael Bush, who is the theater’s artistic director, remains committed to the project, Shimkovitz said, and plans to present it in the fall.

“Pure Heaven” was to run through May 18 at the theater on Library Lane. It tells the story of Kay Thompson, the singer, actress and composer who is best known as the creator of the “Eloise” books.

Shimkovitz said the “box office is calling anyone who bought tickets and offering a refund and letting them know they will honor their tickets in the fall.”

Got a great note from Diana Green at the Children’s Shakespeare Theatre in Palisades. Sometimes, despite the elements, outdoor Shakespeare must go on. At least this weekend and next, it’ll be indoors:

“Despite muddy feet and frozen fingers, The Rogue Players enchanted faire audiences this past weekend with their presentation of “The Taming of The Shrew” at The Hudson Valley Mayfaire. Their boundless energy, precision timing and ease with the wonderful words left a bleacher-full of patrons laughing and applauding heartily.

“These kids speak the text like well-trained college theater students!” – TJ Glenn, fight choreographer for the Mayfaire.

“Their movement and focus as a group was amazing!” – Annmarie Uhl, South Orangetown School Board President.

“For those of you who missed the Mayfaire, do not despair!

“TAMING OF THE SHREW” OPENS FRIDAY!! at the Palisades Presbyterian Church Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. – May 9, 10, 16 & 17 and matinee on Saturday, May 17 2 p.m. also at The Hopper House on Friday, May 30 7:30 p.m. For tickets and info, call: 845-365-9709.”

The Armonk Players present “A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC,” with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, a book by Hugh Wheeler, direction by George Puello and musical direction by George Croom.

Performances are May 30 and 31 at 8 p.m., June 1 at 4 p.m., June 5 at 7:30 p.m., June 6 and 7 at 8 p.m.

The cast includes: Lynne Robyn Barasch (South Salem), Beth Brandon (Bedford), Daniel Carlino (Pleasantville), Christine Colangelo (Thornwood), Christine DiTota (Harrison), Aaron Dworetzky (Armonk), Hillary Ginsberg (Chappaqua), Kat Hughes (Pleasantville), Maia Katz (Armonk), Kathryn Kitt (Sleepy Hollow), Judith Pennyfeather (White Plains), Lisa Pierce (Harrison), Davina Porter (Westport, CT ), Larry Reina (Port Chester), and Anthony Valbiro (Rye).

Performances will be at Whippoorwill Hall, in the North Castle Public Library, on Whippoorwill Road, Armonk
Admission: $15 for Adults, $10 for Seniors and Students
For tickets, call 914-273-2165 or at Framings, 420 Main Street, Armonk. Call 914-273-4242.
The Armonk Players are sponsored by The Friends of the North Castle Public Library Inc.
For more information visit www.armonkplayers.org or contact Anne Nisenholtz at 914-273-0011.

The Village of Briarcliff Manor Recreation & Parks Department presents the 2008 Summercliff Players in Les Miserables.

The production is directed by Kathleen Donovan-Warren with musical direction by Nadia Rizzo and technical direction by James Britt. Tuition is $400 and registration is not limited to residents of Briarcliff Manor and Ossining.

The program is being offered to middle- and high-school students. Interested parties for tech crew are also welcome. Auditions are June 1 at 1 p.m. and June 2 and 5 at 6:30 p.m. at the Briarcliff Manor Recreation Department, 48 Macy Road, Briarcliff Manor.

Rehearsals begin June 23 and performances are Friday, Aug. 1 and Saturday, Aug. 2 at 7:30 p.m.

What are the odds?

Two local theater troupes mounting the same musical on the same weekend? Actually, it happens more than you might think.

The latest coincidental bit of stagemanship comes in a couple of weekends, when Byram Hills High School and Irvington’s Clocktower Players each present the Broadway musical “Swing!”

In Armonk, at Byram Hills High School, the show is May 15 at 7:30 p.m. and May 16 at 8 p.m. (Call 914-273-9200 ext. 460, or e-mail stagetkts@byramhills.org.)

In Irvington,  performances of “Swing!” are at the Irvington Town Hall Theater, 85 Main St., on May 16 at 8 p.m., May 17 at 2 and 8 p.m. and May 18 at 2 p.m. (Call 914-451.6602 or go to www.irvingtontheater.com.)

Wherever you see it — and you can catch it at both venues, if you’re in the mood — you’ll hear some great tunes, from “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” to “Stompin’ at the Savoy” and “In the Mood.”

“There are well-heeled shooters everywhere, everywhere.
There are well-heeled shooters everywhere.”

Well-heeled shooters converge on Woodlands High School this weekend, when the school’s drama club presents Frank Loesser’s “Guys & Dolls.”

At a recent rehearsal, high-schoolers in sharp suits and ties made nice when the lieutenant came sniffing around, but it was clear these guys were itching to throw dice.

There were guys.

There were dolls.

And there were great songs – “Adelaide’s Lament,” “Fugue for Tinhorns,” “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat” and “If I Were a Bell” – that prove the genius of the musical’s composer and lyricist.

Greg Colica, a Woodlands senior, plays Nathan Detroit, proprietor of “the oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York.”

His Detroit is all New York, he says.

It’s not often that high-school students can present a musical set in their hometown, but that’s the case this week when New Rochelle High School’s Theater Works presents “Ragtime,” the Stephen Flaherty-Lynn Ahrens musical based on E.L. Doctorow’s book.

“Ragtime” weaves three seemingly unrelated stories into one tapestry of a specific time in American history, roughly 1904-06.

There’s Coalhouse Walker Jr., an accomplished musician, fighting prejudice and hoping to build a life with Sarah and their child.

There’s Tateh, a Latvian immigrant whose dreams of America’s possibilities are dashed and then reborn.

And there’s Mother, a New Rochelle housewife whose explorer husband’s absence prompts her to develop her own voice and become her own person.

The way Nick Piacente sees it, if he does his job right, people will want him dead.

Not Nick, really, but the character he plays: Mr. Boddy, the owner of Boddy Manor, the mansion in which “Clue: The Musical” is set.

Iona Prep’s Prep Players present “Clue” – based on the whodunnit-with-which-weapon-in-which-room board game – in three performances this week: one on Thursday and two on Saturday.

When he was planning this year’s musical, Port Chester High School director Mark Zizolfo gave Principal Mitchell Combs choices.

“We presented three options, that were either historical or based on literature: ‘Jekyll & Hyde,’ ‘Pippin’ and ‘Cabaret,’” Zizolfo says.
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“He took some time to think about it and he chose ‘Cabaret’ for its historical content – and that’s where we’re putting the theme of the show, its historical content.”

Still, shows come with their own reputations, as David Muto learned when he went home and told his mother he’d been cast as the Emcee, the role Joel Grey played in the 1972 film.

There’s a lot going on in “Hello, Dolly,” this weekend’s spring musical at Walter Panas High School in Cortlandt.

There’s Dolly, of course, a widow who’s ready to settle down with successful Yonkers businessman Horace Vandergelder.

There’s Vandergelder’s niece, Ermengarde, who wants to take up with a man of whom Vandergelder does not approve.

And there’s a hat-shop owner and her assistant – Irene Molloy and Minnie Fay – who go on a memorable date with Vandergelder’s workers, Cornelius Hackl and Barnaby Tucker.

Love is certainly in the air, along with Jerry Herman’s wonderful music and lyrics.

Theresa Egan, 16, a junior, plays Irene Molloy.

Jack W. Batman had a tough act to follow: His own.

In the first year of Batman’s reimagined White Plains Performing Arts Center, the producer presented “Man of la Mancha,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Ragtime” and, tonight, finishes the season with “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

Season 2 will begin with a “spotlight musical” – a small-scale presentation of a big musical, similar to this season’s “Ragtime.”

The show is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita,” with a two-weekend, eight performance run beginning Sept. 26. “Evita” is separate from the mainstage season and gives Batman and team the opportunity to branch out from classic Broadway to anything that strikes their fancy.

“If we want to do something that’s not a classic musical or something that’s Off-Broadway that we like, or an operetta, we can do it as a spotlight musical, a smaller-scale production,” he says.

On the mainstage, the producer is giving his growing audience a taste of everything:—A family friendly show for the holidays “Oliver!” in a four-week run from Nov. 20 through Dec. 14;—The more sophisticated “A Little Night Music” from March 5 through 22;—And the blockbuster “Hello, Dolly!” April 30 through May 17.