It's the dog-days of August and what could be hotter than a 1942 walk up apartment over a store? Two boys-one fifteen, one thirteen-are both dressed in their only suits, which happen to be tweed. Eddie Kurnitz, very recently widowed, is in his mother's room, asking her to take in his two boys, while he takes a traveling sales job to pay off their mother's medical bills and funeral expenses, and the fun begins.

Jay is the older brother and remembers more about the trips to this house, which have been few and far between. Eddie's relationship with his siblings is strong, as is his sons' relationship with one another-Jay and Arty are typical New York kids, wise and wisecracking. They don't know yet, while they are trading stories about Grandma and Aunt Bella, that they will be learning much more about their father's family than apocryphal tales, and much more intimately.

This has been an all-star season for Paper Mill Playhouse and this is no exception. Rosemary Prinz is Grandma Kurnitz-a hard woman to forget, and a hard woman in general. She's cast-iron, but deep inside, the heart is very real. Most people don't think there is one. How does an actress continue a career that has spanned everything from Shakespeare to soaps? By playing one of the tastiest roles written for a woman, in Neil Simon's 1991 Tony and Pulitzer winning play. Prinz brings a verve to the role that lets us hear the clanking of the armor of the heart, even as she's haranguing her beleaguered offspring Eddie (John Plumpis), Louie (J. Anthony Crane), Gert (Patricia Buckley), and the sweet, challenged Bella (Sara Surrey).

While the boys are the raisons d'être for coming to the sepia-furnished home of lost childhoods, Jay and Arty (Alex Wyse and Maxwell Beer respectively) are active observers, as tragedy is teased out of comedy through epistolary passages and intense, small scenes and monologues. The pacing of the play is Simon at his best, with kudos as well to director Michael Bloom, for keeping things moving even after powerful moments. We have time and space to process what has just happened, while part of the mind moves forward with the action.

Beer and Wyse do an excellent job in reflecting not only the worries of boys in general, but also of these particular boys who are poised at the edge of manhood, during a war, thrust into a situation with their father's estranged, and strange, mother. Nothing has changed in their grandmother's apartment, probably in all the years she's lived there. Judging by the varying shades of brown, colors are not Grandma's specialty, but Michael Schweikardt's set and Paul Miller's lighting created separate spaces where dramas great and small occur. We have a sense of old time-y timelessness-the home and family time forgot. David Kay Mickelson's costumes evoke both a sense of period, and in Bella's and Louie's instances, use of color to show energy and love of life.

There is so much angst prior to the first entrance of Grandma-looking a bit like a Teutonic Yoda in her white gown with sage robe and braided hair-that one expects similar wisdom. This is a woman who saw much too much of the world, from a time when she was younger than Arty. Tragedy, surrounding her own children, removed her from feeling compassion for the world. This makes her a formidable opponent for nearly everyone, save her daughter Bella.

Sara Surrey as Bella is the dark horse delight of the piece. Bella is the one who sways her mother, who says "no" initially, to take in her flesh and blood, despite years of estrangement. Bella is the child-like wonder, who has the capacity to draw the miraculous out of her battered siblings. Bella is the woman with a woman's thoughts and feelings, and the child-like expressions of joy, which keep her mother from sliding into the abyss of her own thoughts. Formidable!

Tony Crane as Louie is a Jewish gangster, somewhere prior to Meyer Lansky. Is Uncle Louie a bagman? Is he a-ahem -"Business Man?" An entrepreneur? Only Louie can say, but he teaches his nephews lessons that they would never get from their more sensitive dad. He has a gift for comedy and mugging and is the perfect model of the roguish favorite uncle. Dad may tell you about the birds and bees, but Uncle Louie gives you the full lowdown.

Eddie keeps in touch with his sons via letters that provide a colorful view of life in the South, throughout the Bible Belt, from the buckle to the tail. He's extremely homesick for food, life, other Jewish people and, most of all, he's a widower, lost at sea in the heartland of America. The happy reunion finds his boys closer to men and his family closer than it ever has been.

Gert (Patricia Buckley) is an amazing character. She has an acquired trait that manifests itself as breathing out normally on a sentence until about halfway, then managing to speak while breathing in. Because this happens at extremely unexpected times, it's only in quiet moments of consideration that you see both Simon's genius and Buckley's.

This is the best of families, the worst of families, and quite honestly most like most families. This comes in the midst of Paper Mill's 2009-2010 season and it's a jewel in the diadem of the season.

"Lost in Yonkers" will play the following performance schedule through March 14: Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., Thursdays at 1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 1:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sundays at 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m.. Single tickets are now on sale and range in price from $25 to $92. Student rush tickets are $20 and are available on the day of performance, in person, with current student ID. Tickets may be purchased by calling 973/376-4343, going to the Paper Mill Box Office at 22 Brookside Drive in Millburn, or by visiting www.papermill.org online. Paper Mill Playhouse gift cards, available in any denomination, can be purchased at the Paper Mill Playhouse Box Office. Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express are accepted. Groups of ten or more can receive up to a 25% discount on tickets and should call 973/379-3636, extension 2438.