Brighton Beach Memoirs

The play is a coming-of-age comedy focused on the main character of Eugene Morris Jerome, a Jewish teenager from a Polish immigrant family. The play is set during The Great Depression. According to Simon, the play tells its story "'through the eyes of a 15-year-old boy who is writing his memoirs - which is what I did when I was 15'".
Dreaming of baseball and girls, Eugene must cope with the mundane existence of his family life in Brooklyn: formidable mother, overworked father, and his worldly older brother Stanley. Throw into the mix his widowed Aunt Blanche and her two young (but rapidly aging) daughters and you have a recipe for hilarity, served up Simon-style.

Brighton Beach Memoirs premiered in December 1982. In 1983, it received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play. Brighton Beach Memoirs is the first play in what is known as Simon's Eugene trilogy, and was followed by Biloxi Blues (1984) and Broadway Bound (1986). The play was adapted into a film of the same name in 1986.