LANCASTER GETS 'LOST'\Simon play tells tales of survival.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Daily News Staff Writer

Phipps Wilson ended a 14-year hiatus from acting to take the central role in "Lost in Yonkers": hard, unsentimental Grandma Kurnitz.

"It felt good. It felt safe. It felt comfortable," said Wilson, who studied as a teen-ager in London with a tutor from the Shakespearean Old Vic theater group, and performed with Mark Taper Forum companies from about 1969 to 1974. "Even though I play the character that everybody hates."

Set in the New York suburb of Yonkers in 1942, Neil Simon's play tells of 10 months in the lives of two motherless boys who go to live with their grandmother and their mildly retarded - but sweet - spinster aunt Bella. Grandma Kurnitz doesn't want them there. She belittles their father and tyrannizes their aunt.

Winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for drama and of a Tony Award, and a 1993 movie that earned Mercedes Ruehl an Oscar nomination for her role as Bella, "Lost in Yonkers" is not a lighthearted comedy.

" 'Lost in Yonkers' is a comic drama. There are laughs in the show. But there are some emotional things that happen," said director Michael Duncan.

Produced by Cedar Street Theatre, "Lost in Yonkers" will open tonight and run this weekend and next weekend in the "black box" auxiliary theater at the Lancaster Performing Arts Center, 750 W. Lancaster Blvd.

Tickets are $10. Shows will be at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays.

Duncan, who runs a Lancaster advertising agency, said he has wanted to direct the play since reading it some four years ago.

"It really just touched me," Duncan said. "I really loved the character of Bella. All the characters are wonderful. They all have their quirks, but they're great characters."

Survival is a component in the characters.

The boys survive their 10 months with their grandmother. Their aunt survives her life with her mother, and even begins to grow into independence. The grandmother is a survivor of anti-Jewish persecution in Berlin in her girlhood, and of the deaths of two children and her husband.

Wilson - who in everyday Antelope Valley life is Valerie Wilson, Rosamond correspondent for the Mojave Desert News - said it is not easy to portray the play's heavy.

"It's a tremendous challenge," said Wilson. She wrote TV and movie scripts after giving up acting in 1982 and moved to the Antelope Valley two years ago. "There are parts in the play that personally I wanted to play softer, but it can't be. I wanted to change at the end, but it can't be."

The cast includes real-life teen-age brothers James and Joshua Graves. James, 14, plays the older boy, Jay, and Joshua, 13, plays his younger brother, Arty.

Sierra School teacher Barbara Adams is Bella. Brenda Goodell is Aunt Gert, and Eric C. Mueller is the boys' father, Eddie. The gangster uncle is Louis Michael Sacco.

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Photo (1--ran in SAC and AV--color in AV) Joshua Graves, left, Phipps Wilson, James Graves and Barbara Adams rehearse a scene. (2--AV only--color) James Graves, left, as Jay and Joshua Graves, right, as Arty get a lesson from Louis Michael Sacco, as Uncle Louie. (3--SAC and AV--color in AV) Louis Michael Sacco, left, and Brenda Goodell take direction in a scene from Michael Duncan. Jeff Goldwater/Daily News