A Different Look by Neil Simon : Theater: ‘Broadway Bound’ is the playwright’s least comedic work. It’s now being staged by the Laguna Playhouse.

What worries Jerry Evans most about the Laguna Playhouse’s production of “Broadway Bound” is the audience’s expectations.

“Broadway Bound,” the third segment of Neil Simon’s sentimental, semi-autobiographical trilogy that includes “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and “Biloxi Blues,” is the least comedic of the playwright’s large body of commercial hits.

Fully aware of that, Evans, the director, is concerned that longtime Simon fans, sure to make up much of the show’s audience, may arrive with memories of such gag-stuffed numbers as “The Odd Couple” or “The Sunshine Boys” firmly in mind.

“My biggest fear is that they’ll expect his wise-cracking comments back and forth,” Evans said. “They’ll be disappointed if that’s what they’re looking for because (‘Broadway Bound’) is more of an in-depth look at life.

“He does enough of the wisecracking here, but I think he had to write this from a personal place; he had to say it in a more serious way. This really is about Simon reconciling his feelings about his family, the things that were lost there. It shows that the things that happened weren’t always so cute.”

In “Broadway Bound,” Simon returns to the two-story home where we met the Jeromes in “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” The family is in place, but times have changed. Smart-mouthed, adolescent Eugene (i.e., the youthful Simon) has become an aware, tougher-minded man in his 20s with a career as a comedy writer beckoning. The family is in disarray, with his father on the verge of deserting his mother.

The play’s focus is the mother, Kate, a harried, anxious woman who knows her marriage of 33 years is about to dissolve. Eugene is transfixed by her, by what the family has become and by his own future.

Although Simon often is faulted by critics for his glib style, “Broadway Bound” has received wide praise for its basic humanity and for the relative risks the playwright took.

Times theater writer Sylvie Drake disliked the staging of the play at the Ahmanson in Los Angeles in 1988, but she also had this to say: “. . . Any time a writer can take such a loving look back at the pain in his own family and create a comedy filled with one-liners solidly based on character rather than mere invention, you know the play has more than bankability. It has stature.”

Even New York Times drama critic Frank Rich, hardly the biggest Simon supporter, found much to admire when he reviewed “Broadway Bound’s” Broadway premiere in 1986: “. . . The compensating rewards are there when Mr. Simon, like mother and son in their imaginary ballroom, uncovers the family history that’s never over, and, mature artist that he is, makes it spin.”

Evans, who characterizes himself as a “really big Simon fan,” understands the plaudits. What he doesn’t get is why Simon often has been ridiculed as superficial and without lasting resonance.

“He’s just too easy a target, that’s how I see it. To knock him can become a cheap way of intellectualizing. What I see is how, even in his comedies, he makes the connections between people. He’s commercially successful because he does that, because people can relate so easily.”

“Broadway Bound” brings Evans back to the stage after nearly 20 years. The Laguna Beach resident directed a few productions in New York (mainly off-off Broadway, he said) but has made a career in television.

He has worked on the soaps since 1968, when he helped produce “Another World.” He later moved to “Ryan’s Hope,” which won him daytime Emmys for directing in 1979 and ’80. Currently, he’s directing episodes of “General Hospital.”

“I enjoy TV for a lot of reasons. The money is good, for one thing, but it’s also the collaborative quality of working on a soap. It’s exciting and everybody is such a pro.

“But what’s fun about theater is having more control as a director. I never get to cast the actors in TV, but I did at Laguna. You get to more completely mold a production. . . . I had a great time doing that.”