The ingredients of a Neil Simon play are laugh-out-loud humor with a side of seriousness, and the Community Players serve up a perfect mixture in their production of Brighton Beach Memoirs.

The play’s first act is funny, the second more somber. In both cases, however, director Brian Mulvey and his cast get the tone just right. Add an interestingly detailed set, plus a new, young actor worth watching, and you’ve got an excellent production.

Set in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn in 1937, a time ravaged by the Great Depression and threatened by World War II, the play is the first in Simon’s semi-autobiographical trilogy that includes “Biloxi Blues” and “Broadway Bound.”

Fifteen-year-old Eugene Jerome, Simon’s alter ego, is dreaming about baseball, discovering his own sexuality, and observing with precocious interest the goings on within his family.

His older brother, Stanley, 18, is his confidant and role model, albeit a reluctant one. Jack, their father, works too much, while Kate, their mother, does her demanding best to hold everything together, a formidable task since her widowed sister, Blanche, and two daughters moved in to share the house and Jack’s income.

Crowding so many people into one house is the source of both the humor and the second-act drama as budgets and nerves are strained. Young and old experience dreams and disappointments, all very human and understandable. Simon writes insightfully about small events that have huge emotional significance.

But those insights would be lost if the actors didn’t deliver the lines with understanding, and that’s where the Community Players hit the mark. All seven in the cast are just fine, but Barbara Schapiro is especially good as Kate, finding subtle emotions in a woman who is both defined and burdened by her responsibilities.

Andrew Holder has a polished stage presence and draws attention whenever his Stanley is in a scene, while Melanie Chitwood as Nora, Blanche’s older daughter, is convincing in portraying her character’s adolescent indignation and the vulnerability just below the surface.

But the star of the show is young Matthew Vergun as Eugene, the main character in this tale of growing up Jewish in Brooklyn. Vergun is funny, serious, cynical, sardonic – all expressed so naturally in his tone of voice or the tilt of his head. He opens the show calling an imagined baseball game in which he, the pitcher, saves the day, and even with his back to the audience much of the time, he grabs your attention. He is a find.

The Players present the show on an ambitious upstairs/downstairs set. The focus may be on a couple characters talking upstairs, but others in the cast are silently doing things downstairs, so watching the play is like looking into a real home.

Performances of Brighton Beach Memoirs continue Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., in Jenks Auditorium, Division Street, across from McCoy Stadium. Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for students through high school; reserve online at www.thecommunityplayers.org or call (401) 726-6860.