Broadway Bound is the final part of the trilogy that begins with Brighton Beach Memoirs. The middle play, Biloxi Blues, not yet seen in London, is being produced in Manchester in October. Not that it matters whether they are seen in order or not. To judge from Broadway Bound, they are best seen separately and preferably at fairly long intervals. This does not mean that Broadway Bound is an unsatisfactory play. Merely that a little of Neil Simon in autobiographical mode goes a long way.

This time he is examining his late adolescence, when he and his elder brother get their start as comedy scriptwriters and rapidly progress to the threshold of the big time. Once again it is peppered with smart one-liners but the mood is generally on the dark side. The parents' marriage is on the point of breaking up, Jack Jerome having found another woman, presumably also Jewish but not subscribing to quite the same stern moral and emotional code as Kate's. Ben Epstein, Kate's father, now lives with them, having decided that his serious approach to life, with Trotsky as his god is incompatible with geriatric marriage which inevitably leads to retirement in Miami. Sister Blanche, having married a millionaire, is now seriously rich and resides on Park Avenue instead of in Brook1yn.

It is a play in which each character parades his or her Jewish conscience, particularly Kate and Jack. She can overlook casual infidelity but cannot forgive Jack for taking his love away. Jack, wrapped up in male selfishness, believes his family should be able to understand how he feels. The boys, having almost unconsciously written their first radio script around the personalities of their family, are stricken with guilt when Jack, in particular, recognises it and accuses them of insulting their parents. Though obviously written with understanding and feeling, Broadway Bound is an example of an author exorcising his own personal demons, which does not make an entire1y comfortable evening in the theatre.

As it goes on, the one-liners run out and we are left with a bleak vision of a family dispersed and resigned to their fate, loneliness for Kate, unhappiness for Jack, probably ulcers and insomnia for Eugene and Stanley and Miami for grandfather. One has the feeling that an American Jewish cast might get a firmer grip on the play, but Anna Massey has a moving inflexibility as Kate, whose shining memory is when she once danced with George Raft at the Primrose Ballroom but whose life has been cooking and cleaning and dutifully caring. Frank Middlemass has the necessary crusty Socialist humourlessness as the old man, Gary Waldhorn shows how guilt often acquires an aggressive veneer. Toby Whithouse  as Eugene, the narrator, and William Gaminara are the brothers bound together in ambition, using their Jewish experience but inexorably moving away from faith and family, and Barbara Ferris has a good scene as sister Blanche. David Taylor directs, with a setting by Simon Higlett that manages to simultaneously show a living room, two bedrooms, a staircase and a front door.