‘Lost in Yonkers’ climaxes Las Vegas Little Theatre season

He made it, Ma! Top of the world!

Just took a little digging to find out who beat him to it.

"What was his name -- something Cagney?" asks 12-year-old acting newbie Enrique Corn. "James Cagney! That man! I didn't know who the heck he was but after reading the script and a few trips to YouTube, I learned he was one of the most badass gangsters in moviedom."

Kid's a dirty rat -- in the best sense.

Forget 2011. It's 1942. Every 12-year-old worships the toughie who never actually growled, "Mmmm, you dirty rat!" (He actually growled, "Mmmm, that dirty, double-crossin' rat!" in 1931's "Blonde Crazy.")

This relates to Neil Simon ... how? Merely a pop-culture reference in "Lost in Yonkers," the venerable playwright's Pulitzer Prize winner, concluding Las Vegas Little Theatre's mainstage season.

That's Enrique there now, rehearsing for his stage debut, as director Brian Scott warns him from filling up on a buffet for the cast, suggesting a light snack.

"You'll say your line and a burp will come out," Scott says, to which Gail K. Romero, playing the stern grandmother to Enrique's Arty, adds: "Or something else. That's how Grandma clears a room!"

Snap to, kids. Time to get serious. They do, though Enrique slouches during a line reading. "Unless everyone's in your lap, they're never going to hear that," Scott tells him. "Sit up!"

Simon-esque laughs turn on a dime to drama in "Yonkers," the 1991 milestone for the playwright that ponders how children fare in the absence of love.

Set during World War II, it finds two kids, Arty and Jay -- whose mother has just died -- sent to live with their grandmother, a German refugee who has steeled herself against the world with her cold, intolerant heart.

The brothers try to cope while witnessing her hurtful impact on family members around her: The boys' father, left with no self-esteem; one aunt with an embarrassing speech impediment; their small-time gangster uncle; and especially their other aunt, Bella.

"What this play does very well is to examine people playing the hand they're dealt," Scott says. "The kids have to deal with Dad leaving. Dad does not want to leave the kids with Grandma, but he doesn't have a big choice. Grandma doesn't want to take the children in, but she does. What I tell my cast is: There are not huge changes. Grandma does not suddenly become this little old lady who bakes cookies. She is like most people, she stays the way she is, but there are shadings. The boys change, but not their entire character. Shadings."

Yet the core clash pits Grandma against Bella, a mentally slow woman in her mid-30s who never left her childhood home. Yearning for warmth in the face of her mother's emotional iciness and curt dismissal of Bella's prospects for a normal life -- a husband, children, emotional and physical intimacy she's never known -- she talks about a local movie usher she says is interested in her.

Though radiating sweetness, she shows a surprising steeliness. "I feel empty inside, like you do all the time," says Marlena Shapiro onstage and in character as Bella, her fragile voice belying her anger toward Romero's Grandma. "Maybe I'm still a child, but I have just enough woman in me to make me miserable."

Considering Bella's emotional makeup, Shapiro notes that "it's her belief in love and wanting all those things and continuing to strive for what brings happiness and love -- directly the opposite of Mama," Shapiro says. "Despite the relationship and maybe because of Mama, you see what you don't want to be."

Noting the grandmother's scarring from her childhood in Germany as integral to her hard-shelled demeanor, Shapiro adds: "Both my parents were concentration camp survivors and maybe that's why this play is so special to me. Unlike 'Grandma,' my mother was appreciative of every moment in her life."

Bearing no resemblance to her martinet character -- who certainly wouldn't joke about gaseous emissions -- Romero puts "Grandma" in perspective.

"She is a life and death kind of person, very black and white, there's not a lot of give in her character," Romero says. "From her experience in Germany, she had to survive in order to live and now she does the same in everyday life. You want to like her, but she doesn't give you any openings. By the end, you see where she came from and knowing that, she's at least tolerable. She's not a villain."

While Shapiro and Romero team up onstage, Scott and Enrique are an intriguing pair as well: Director and child actor are also teacher and student at Cortney Junior High School, Scott encouraging his pupil -- for whom he clearly has affection -- to audition for "Yonkers." With the consent and supervision of his parents, Enrique won the role and his first onstage experience.

"He is absolutely a natural," says Scott, who also admires his playfulness. "I had everyone onstage and I said, 'Are there any men who would mind shaving off their facial hair?' And Enrique says, 'Oh no, I just started, they're nubs!' "

Quick to laugh -- easily, loudly, even sometimes bordering on bawdy, throwing his head back in amusement -- Enrique describes Arty as "a nice, lovable smartass" but says one aspect of kids' behavior circa 1942 struck him as different from today.

"The biggest thing was no disrespect," he says. "Today, kids dish out disrespect like nothing. But if you disrespect them here, you'll get whupped in the head."

Or -- if you disrespect Cagney -- perhaps get smushed in the face with a grapefruit, a la Mae Clarke (in 1931's "The Public Enemy").

However, Enrique's research remains naggingly incomplete.

"Humphrey Bogart?" he asks. "I still don't know who he was."

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.