Most kids like to visit Grandma. But 15-year-old Jay (Steven Kaplan) and 13-year-old Arty (Austyn Myers) are reminded why they don’t when dad Eddie (Spencer Rowe) makes them sit in starched and sweaty discomfort in the sweltering living room, waiting for the old dragon to emerge from the bedroom.

Grandma Kurnitz (Judy Kaye) is a Holocaust escapee with a thick German accent and cane who raised her kids with sharp words and harsh punishment in order to teach them that “you don’t survive in this world without being like steel.” She doesn’t like noise, disorder or, apparently, children. She ruled the family by intimidation and still terrorizes at-home, mildly retarded but sunny 35-year-old daughter Bella (Jennifer Regan) – and anyone else within earshot.

The script indicates that Bella was born with scarlet fever which could have affected her brain; sister Gert (Amanda Naughton) gasps for breath when visiting her mother (but only then). The fourth sib is smalltime gangster Louie (Jeffrey M. Bender). Though Grandma regards Eddie as weak (he cries), he is the most normal of the quartet.

It’s 1942, and Jay and Arty have recently lost their mother to a long bout with cancer. Dad, deep in hock to a loan shark for her care, intends to leave the kids with Grandma while he moves South to sell scrap metal for the war industry – a trade he thinks will raise the money relatively quickly. Can the boys survive life with Grandma?

Neil Simon’s family dramedy Lost in Yonkers plays through Sunday, Feb. 28, at the Old Globe’s new Sheryl & Harvey White Theatre, wonderfully directed by Scott Schwartz.

A far cry from the usual Simon collection of one-liners, Lost in Yonkers may well be his best play. Winner of both Tony and Pulitzer prizes for best play in 1991, it offers fully realized characters and an engaging narrative arc. The Globe has added a sterling cast, fine direction, an appropriate set and costumes; the result is a superb production.

Kaplan and local favorite Myers are stage naturals and terrific as the boys, saying as much with expressions and movements as with words.

Regan is heartbreaking as Bella, the girl-woman so desperate for love that she wants to take up with an inappropriate man.

Rowe is heart-tugging as Eddie, who only wants the best for his boys but knows what they’re in for at Grandma’s.

Bender is convincing as Louie and Naughton does well in a small but difficult role.

But this show belongs to Kaye’s Grandma, the dragon with the cane, who reportedly “could swing the cane so fast, she could have been one of the greatest golfers in the world,” and thanks to great makeup and acting is a frightening presence indeed.

Lost in Yonkers is set during the war, but this is a family saga, not a war story.

Tolstoy said that happy families are alike but unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. This family is certainly distinctive, this production riveting.

Lost in Yonkers plays through Sunday, Feb. 28, at the Old Globe’s Sheryl & Harvey White Theatre. Shows Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 619-23-GLOBE or visit www.theoldglobe.org.

Ghost stories may be a lot of things – murky, misty, foggy, maybe even a little out of focus. But most of all, they are supposed to be scary.

Whisper House is murky, all right, getting lost in its tripartite plot strands encompassing ghost story, coming-of-age saga and political morality tale. This new musical by Tony-winning songwriter Duncan Sheik and book writer and co-lyricist Kyle Jarrow plays through Sunday, Feb. 21, at the Old Globe Theatre, with Peter Askin directing.

Eleven-year-old Christopher (A.J. Foggiano) sees dead people cavorting around the old Maine lighthouse where he’s been sent to stay with his taciturn Aunt Lilly (Mare Winningham), keeper of the lighthouse since her father’s death.

Lilly demands to be called “Miss Lilly,” acknowledges that she doesn’t dig kids and opines that “I think the best thing is to speak to each other as little as possible,” which doesn’t exactly make Christopher feel welcome.

But it’s 1942, Christopher’s dad has been killed in action in the South Pacific and his mom’s hospitalized with a breakdown. And now he’s stuck in this drafty old lighthouse with his weird aunt and her Japanese handyman Yasuhiro (Arthur Acuña), whom Chris regards as the enemy because of his nationality.

So for company he’s left with two spiffily-clad ghosts (David Poe and Holly Brook), the sources of the titular whispers. They serve as narrators, Greek chorus and soundtrack, as this overmiked duo sings all the songs – in cabaret style, with frequently mushy diction.

They also have designs on the kid. Seems in 1912 they died at a fancy Halloween yacht party on a night when Lilly’s father got drunk and forgot to turn the light on; the boat ran aground and sank. They need to take a life in order to be released.

Or something. The problem is, there’s nothing particularly ghostly (and certainly nothing scary) about them, other than the fact that only Christopher sees them. These two sound like club singers, look like they stepped out of “Topper” and seem downright sensual.

The World War II plot strand reports the (real) danger of German U-boats patrolling U.S. coastlines and burning American merchant ships, and also notes the U.S. government decree that no resident of German, Italian or Japanese ancestry can live near a “sensitive location.” This underdeveloped part of the plot offers two underwritten characters. Coast Guard Lt. Rando (Kevin Hoffmann) arrives to install a radio so Lilly can be signaled when to turn off the lights. And genial Sheriff Charles (Ted Köch) comes to tell Lilly that Yasuhiro must leave. Both characters are too sketchy to be more than mere plot devices.

Foggiano is effective as Christopher, though he seems more puzzled than scared by the spectral spirits, and perhaps even attracted to the female ghost. But will he grow up and realize who his real friends are? His story needs to be more sharply written.

Winningham is reliably terrific as the tight-lipped spinster lighthouse keeper, a model of New England self-sufficiency who, as far as we can tell, neither wants nor needs human connection.

Acuna is to be congratulated for managing to create a layered character from the script’s stereotype of the Japanese immigrant.

The show’s technical aspects are generally first-rate, starting with Michael Schweikardt’s set: the interior of the lighthouse, with winding staircase, a small room on the second level and a big (but, oddly, not revolving) light at the top, enclosed by a railing and a narrow widow’s walk. Matthew Richards’ lighting design, eerie sound effects by Don Moses Schreier and Aaron Rhyne’s back projections are equally effective. And Jason Hart’s fine seven-piece band, arrayed in a ghostly, top hat-clad line to the rear, add to the otherworldly look.

But the show itself needs work, beginning with the banal sitcom-level script. If this is a ghost story, scare me a little. If it’s about war, give me an explosion that shakes the rafters. If it’s about scared people learning to connect, show me a connection.

“If you’re terrified, that’s how you’re supposed to be,” the ghosts sing.

Alas, I wasn’t terrified. I was looking at my watch.

Whisper House plays through Sunday, Feb. 21, at the Old Globe Theatre. Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 7 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 619-23-GLOBE or visit www.theoldglobe.org.