NORTH BEND — Josh Jennings has been waiting four years to play Eugene Morris in “Broadway Bound.”

It’s a role he’s had since 15 with “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” the first part of Neil Simon’s semi-autobiographical trilogy, at On Broadway Theater in 2003 and “Biloxi Blues” at Little Theatre on the Bay two years later.

A few months ago, his plans involved a different Eugene. Now 21, he was all set to attend Lane Community College this fall.

But when the opportunity came to finish the trilogy, Jennings dropped everything. He put off school, cut back his hours at work and cut off 14 inches of his hair for the part — his first haircut since his last stint as Eugene Morris.

“I had to do a lot of adjusting to stick around for it,” Jennings said. “If it was any other show, I wouldn’t have done it.”

The play, which opens tonight at LTOB, reunites the 2003 cast members, most of whom have done all three plays.

Director Byrell Justice was less enthusiastic about finishing the trilogy.

“After doing the first one, I realized, ‘I gotta do “Biloxi Blues,”’” he said. “Then I read ‘Broadway Bound’ and I thought, ‘I’m not doing that one — that’s too depressing.’”

Simon has been credited for successfully blending comedy and drama in all three plays, but the first two are significantly lighter than the third, which deals with the breakup of his parents’ marriage.

Justice said the play hit too close to home for him, and it wasn’t until his father died last year that he felt ready to approach it.

“I think people will see a lot of their own parents in this,” he said.

In the meantime, Jennings never quit pressing him to do the play.

“I feel it’s necessary to explain the whole story,” Jennings said. “It’s a lot deeper than the other shows, but sometimes you can’t always be funny. Sometimes you’ve got to really tell it like it is.”

It’s not just the original cast — including Justice’s wife, Cassie, and her brother, Randy Hines — who are returning. Even the set and the furniture are the same as what was used in “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” Justice said.

Playing the same role for so long has been a unique experience, Jennings said.

“I’ve had a lot of time for the characters to grow on me,” he said. “It’s a pretty cool thing that we’ve all stuck around for seven years and are willing to get together for one last big bang.”

The play

“There are two things a woman doesn’t need to be told,” Kate says. “When she’s pregnant and when her husband has stopped loving her.”

After 33 years of marriage, it’s not another baby she’s worried about. A prototypical self-sacrificing, guilt-inducing Jewish mother, Kate (Cassie Justice) is watching her world fall apart. After focusing her whole life on her family and home, almost never venturing beyond Brooklyn, she’s losing all of them in 1948.

Her sons — Eugene (Josh Jennings), 25, and Stanley (Randy Hines), 29 — are looking to land jobs as comedy writers for CBS and leave the nest for Manhattan. Her husband, Jack (Byrell Justice), is having an affair. And her sister, Blanche (Cheri Valentine), would like to convince their father (Gordon Freid) to move to Florida for his estranged wife’s health.

To Eugene, though, the humorless family is an endless source of comedic material. Because no one else laughs at his jokes, he considers Stanley the only one who gets him. But their verbally abusive relationship hardly looks like a source of comfort.

When Eugene listens to his mother tell her life story, he interjects how it will need to be revised for the movie. With “Broadway Bound,” however, Simon resists the inclination to neaten his family history.