In Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers," we hear about Aunt Bella before we meet her. Onstage, her nephews watch her through the window of her upstairs apartment as she approaches her building.
She walks right by the front door.That's classic Bella, we soon learn. Described as "childlike," she's an unmarried woman in her 30s who still lives with her stern, protective mother. We're given a wealth of insight into her character from just a few gentle Simon jokes that accompany her entrance onstage. She forgot her key, she tells her nephews."How did you get in downstairs?" one asks."I used my spare key," she replies.Most playwrights would have given us a fairly one-dimensional, mentally challenged character, content to let her goof-ups contribute a few solid laughs. But Simon goes much further in this beautifully written play, one of his best. His Bella is warm, sensitive, occasionally petulant. Goofy at times, she also aches with an awareness of the life she might have had -- if circumstances had been different.It's tempting, in fact, to chalk up the impact of Bella to Simon's skill. Some people have gone so far as to say that his plays are "actor proof."But that would be discounting the outstanding performance given by Danielle Jorn in the Good Company Players production at the 2nd Space Theatre (though Oct. 11).Jorn is, in a word, exquisite.And I've been talking up her performance to anyone who will listen ever since the show opened.I wrote in my review of the show that I rarely feel I'm in the presence of an actor truly inhabiting a character on stage, but Jorn reaches that summit.Bella was actually the first speaking role that Jorn ever had, when she was a high school sophomore, so it's a sentimental one for her. (She went on to be an acclaimed theater major at Fresno State.)"It's sort of the show that really sparked my desire to continue to act," she says.She worked hard with director Karan Johnson, she says, to make sure that Bella wasn't like a cartoon character. "There was a lot of tweaking to make sure people knew there was something not quite right, but not slap people in the face with it. She's really a child trapped in a woman's body in a lot of ways."In a way, Bella grows a lot in front of the audience's eyes -- more so than any other character in the play."The main thing that she keeps beginning to end is her undeniable hope," says Jorn, who at age 22 manages to flawlessly evoke a character in her mid 30s. "It's hard to forget a character who fights so hard for what she wants."All this wouldn't come together, of course, without an outstanding ensemble cast. Actors talk a lot about the "families" that form in a show like this, and Jorn is no exception, but it's true that without a solid ensemble, she wouldn't have been able to thrive.I know that I'm not the only one to feel this way about Jorn's portrayal. Probably the fiercest defender of all things Neil Simon in this city is Dan Pessano, managing director of Good Company, who wrote his master's thesis on the playwright. Granted, he's got a point of view here, as head of the theater, but he's also a straight shooter when it comes to all things theatrical -- especially his beloved Simon.So when Pessano tells me that he saw Mercedes Ruehl perform as Bella in "Lost in Yonkers" on Broadway the night after the play won the Pulitzer Prize, and that Jorn is a rival to that performance, I listen. I really do."Sometimes a performer can walk on and just open the door to her heart," Pessano says. "Danielle is amazing."I couldn't agree more.