Biloxi Blues

Biloxi Blues

If one were reading a simple plot summary of this play, it would appear to be a typical story of young men entering the army. Six boys deal with leaving their homes for a place that seems like the middle of nowhere, a stern, intolerable, and borderline insane sergeant, repulsive army food, and each other, while training to be shipped to World War II. Biloxi Blues is the Tony Award winning second installment of a comic trilogy depicting Simon’s life and his journey to become a writer. It chronicles the coming-of-age of the main character, Eugene Morris Jerome, who is the autobiographical depiction of playwright Neil Simon himself. In many ways Biloxi Blues is not your typical army story. The hilarious aspects and serious undertones of this compelling story would require excellent acting to fully convey the meaning to a theatre audience, while in reading the play one can easily pick up on Simon’s meanings.

The play begins with six young soldiers trying to get some sleep while cramped in a train on its way to boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi. The main character, Eugene Morris Jerome, is wide-awake and writing observations of his comrades in a journal, which he stubbornly refers to throughout the play as his “memoirs.” In his journal he announces the four goals he wants to accomplish before leaving the military: become a writer, fall in love, lose his virginity and not die. As this is going on, the other boys wake up and begin picking on and arguing over each other’s sleeping habits, and the comedic exchanges begin. The other soldiers consist of an obnoxious macho type named Wykowski; a tough talking mama’s boy named Selridge; an aspiring singer and comedic relief named Carney; a mild yet stubborn intellectual named Epstein; and a sensitive, mediator type named Hennessey. The men are all so different from one another, it’s often difficult for them all to get along, but they manage. The banter between the men gives the play a lively sense of what it really must have been like to be a recruit in those days, rather than glamorizing it.

As the story develops, a spitting, stubborn, stern sergeant from the south, Merwin Toomey, is introduced. The sergeant is another hilarious aspect of the play; he bullies the boys and has wacky disciplinary tactics that he thinks will keep them in line. These tactics also offer deep, revealing glimpses into his past as well as comedic moments. One of the most moving scenes is when he announces that he too has played along