ANGELA Punch McGregor sees herself as “an analytical person” and it’s those analytical skills that she brings to bear in directing Neil Simon’s somewhat serious comedy “Lost in Yonkers,” opening tomorrow night at Theatre 3, with a preview tonight. 

She’s a familiar face at Canberra Rep. First playing for the company in husband Ross’s production of “Camille” back in the 1970s, she has since directed “four or five productions.

She has a terrific hand-picked cast that includes two young actors playing boys in their mid-teens and veteran Colin Milner, who once actually lived inYonkers, NY, playing their debt-ridden father Eddie.

This play has its special challenges. The test for her – and by her own admission she’s a very text-based director – is that the script sees Simon, a master comedian, turning to a serious subject.

It is well-known that this play is partly biographical, Punch McGregor tells me. “I learned to fend for myself very early,” Simon has written, “I began to think early on… that I’d better start taking care of myself somehow, emotionally” — very similar to the boys in “Yonkers.”

It’s a heart-warming “coming-of-age story” in which two young boys come to terms with a dysfunctional family when they go to live with Grandma.

Set in the transitional era following World War II when prosperity is asserting itself in a new boom, the play presents an opportunity for Punch McGregor to have her cast striking a delicate balance between comedy and drama. The era, she says, creates “a catalyst for change” and sometimes the laughs are quiet and subtle, so it’s her job to make sure that each actor understands the text well enough to bring it off.

On designer Andrew Kay’s evocative period set earlier this week, Citynews caught a glimpse of the actors Pippin Carroll and Lachlan Ruffy playing the 13 and 15-year-old boys Arty and Jay as they experiment with standing up to their aggressive uncle Louie, played by Paul Jackson.

Punch McGregor has been enjoying a freezing Canberra winter –“I like putting on my mittens.” For seven years she’s been Senior Acting lecturer at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and while she is blooming, obvious from the roses in her cheeks, she is relishing a break here in our more familiar climate while husband Ross hold the fort teaching her classes at WAAPA.

She’s been gifted with a cast that was a breeze to audition. “They’re “talented and proficient,” she says.

“Lost inYonkers,” at Theatre 3, Acton, from September 14-29, Wednesday to Saturday 8pm, matinees August, 11, 12 and 18, 2pm.

Tickets: Full $38, Concession $32, Preview $27, bookings to 6257 1950.