(Farce / 5m, 5f / Int. At a large, tastefully appointed Sn...)
Farce / 5m, 5f / Int. At a large, tastefully appointed Sneden's Landing townhouse, the Deputy Mayor of New York has just shot himself. Though only a flesh wound, four couples are about to experience a severe attack of Farce. Gathering for their tenth wedding anniversary, the host lies bleeding in the other room and his wife is nowhere in sight. His lawyer, Ken and wife Chris must get "the story" straight before the other guests arrive. As the confusions and mis-communications mount, the evening spins off into classic farcical hilarity. "Light, frothy and fun." - New York Post "Has nothing on its mind except making the audience laugh." - The New York Times "Neil Simon makes people laugh-a lot!" - USA Today "Not only side splitting, but front and back splitting." - NBC-TV
Full Length, Comic Drama / Casting: 6m, 2f / Scenery: Various sets
Tony Award Best Play 1985
The second in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Neil Simon's trilogy which began with Brighton Beach Memoirs and concluded with Broadway Bound. When we last met Eugene Jerome, he was coping with adolescence in 1930's Brooklyn. Here, he is a young army recruit during WW II, going through basic training and learning about Life and Love with a capital 'L' along with some harsher lessons, while stationed at boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1943.
"A fine comedy, and another step in the process of making Simon neither so simple, nor so simplistic."-New York Post
"Joyous and unexpectedly rewarding."-The New York Times
"A play that rings with a newer, deeper, sweeter truth."-New York magazine
(Comedy / 7m, 3f / Int/ext. Leon Tolchinsky is ecstatic. H...)
Comedy / 7m, 3f / Int/ext. Leon Tolchinsky is ecstatic. He's landed a terrific teaching job in an idyllic Russian hamlet. When he arrives he finds people sweeping dust from the stoops back into their houses and people milking upside down to get more cream. The town has been cursed with Chronic Stupidity for 200 years and Leon's job is to break the curse. No one tells him that if he stays over 24 hours and fails to break the curse, he too becomes Stupid. But, he has fallen in love with a girl so Stupid that she has only recently learned how to sit down. "The brightest, freshest, funniest, wittiest, warmest and happiest to do on Broadway in many a day." - CBS-TV
(Comedy / 6m, 2f / Int. This classic comedy opens as a gro...)
Comedy / 6m, 2f / Int. This classic comedy opens as a group of the guys assembled for cards in the apartment of divorced Oscar Madison. And if the mess is any indication, it's no wonder that his wife left him. Late to arrive is Felix Unger who has just been separated from his wife. Fastidious, depressed and none too tense, Felix seems suicidal, but as the action unfolds Oscar becomes the one with murder on his mind when the clean-freak and the slob ultimately decide to room together with hilarious results as The Odd Couple is born. "His skill is not only great but constantly growing...There is scarcely a moment that is not hilarious." - The New York Times "Fresh, richly hilarious and remarkably original. Wildly, irresistibly, incredibly and continuously funny." - New York Daily News
(Neil Simons inimitable play about the trials and tribula...)
Neil Simons inimitable play about the trials and tribulations that test family ties winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
What happens to children in the absence of love? That is the question that lies at the heart of this funny and heartrending play by one of America's most acclaimed and beloved playwrights. Debuting at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in 1990, Lost in Yonkers went on to win four Tony Awards, including Best Play, as well as the Pulitzer Prize, and tells the moving drama about the cruelties and painful memories that scar a family.
It is New York, 1942. After the death of their mother, two young brothers are sent to stay with their formidable grandmother for the longest ten months of their lives. Grandmother Kurnitz is a one-woman German fronta refugee and a widow who has steeled her heart against the world. Her coldness and intolerance have crippled her own children: the boys' father has no self-esteem . . . their Aunt Gert has an embarrassing speech impediment . . . their Uncle Louie is a small-time gangster . . . and their Aunt Bella has the mentality of a child. But it is Bella's hunger for affection and her refusal to be denied love that saves the boysand that leads to an unforgettable, wrenching confrontation with her mother. Filled with laughter, tears, and insight, Lost in Yonkers is yet another heartwarming testament to Neil Simon's talent.
(Comedy / 4m, 2f / Int. Paul and Corie Bratter are newlywe...)
Comedy / 4m, 2f / Int. Paul and Corie Bratter are newlyweds in every sense of the word. He's a straight-as-an-arrow lawyer and she's a free spirit always looking for the latest kick. Their new apartment is her most recent find-too expensive with bad plumbing and in need of a paint job. After a six day honeymoon, they get a surprise visit from Corie's loopy mother and decide to play matchmaker during a dinner with their neighbor-in-the-attic Velasco, where everything that can go wrong, does. Paul just doesn't understand Corie, as she sees it. He's too staid, too boring and she just wants him to be a little more spontaneous, running "barefoot in the park" would be a start... "A bubbling, rib-tickling comedy." - The New York Times "Critic weeps joyfully...I don't think anybody stopped laughing while the curtain was up last evening." - New York Daily News
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Neil Simon has become America's most prolific and popular dramatist. His tragicomic plays expose human frailties and make people laugh at themselves.
Background
Neil Simon was born on July 4, 1927, in The Bronx, New York, to Jewish parents. His father, Irving Simon, was a garment salesman, and his mother, Mamie (Levy) Simon, was mostly a homemaker. Simon had one older brother by eight years, television writer and comedy teacher Danny Simon. He grew up in Washington Heights, Manhattan during the period of the Great Depression, graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School when he was sixteen, where he was nicknamed "Doc" and described as extremely shy in the school yearbook.
Simon's childhood was difficult and mostly unhappy due to his parents' "tempestuous marriage" and financial hardship caused by the Depression. He would sometimes block out their arguments by putting a pillow over his ears at night. His father often abandoned the family for months at a time, causing them further financial and emotional hardship. As a result, Simon and his brother Danny were sometimes forced to live with different relatives, or else their parents took in boarders for some income.
To escape difficulties at home he often took refuge in movie theaters, where he especially enjoyed comedies with silent stars like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy. Simon recalls: "I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud. "
Education
Soon after graduating high school, Simon signed up with the Army Air Force Reserve at New York University, eventually being sent to Colorado as a corporal. It was during those years in the Reserve that Simon began writing, starting as a sports editor. He was assigned to Lowry Air Force Base during 1945 and attended the University of Denver from 1945 to 1946
Career
Two years later, he quit his job as a mailroom clerk in the Warner Brothers offices in Manhattan and together with his brother from 1947 to 1956 worked as a team writing comedy for television hits such as the Jackie Gleason and Phil Silvers Shows. Simon continued writing comedy for four years after his brother quit to become a television director. Some of television's top shows were showcases for his work, including the Sid Caesar and Garry Moore Shows.
The pleasure was fading, however, and he turned his energies to playwriting in 1960. Simon's first play, Come Blow Your Horn, was a modest hit; but it was followed shortly thereafter with Barefoot in the Park, a runaway hit that ran on Broadway for four years.
His third play, The Odd Couple, introduced two characters that have become American icons - Felix and Oscar, two men estranged from their wives who move in together to save money, and find that they have the same problems living with each other as they did with their wives. The story lines usually presented conflicts between two people, and were filled with funny one-liners that brought the house down. While not entirely autobiographical, Simon makes no secret about using personal experiences or those of his friends for material. Some applauded his new "real life honesty, " while others still criticized his characterizations as being superficial. Simon continued to depict characters grappling to handle their feelings in difficult situations, and releasing tension with humor.
In a 1996 interview with Randy Gener for American Theatre, Simon commented, "I was writing plays that made people laugh. I wanted a response from the audience that would make up for whatever it was that was missing from those formative years of mine. " For him, laughter provided a sense of comfort, fulfillment, and approval to replace insecurity, fear of abandonment, and later the futility of loss. During this period he wrote The Sunshine Boys, The Good Doctor, California Suite, and Chapter Two, whose leading character, a widower, feels guilty and miserable over falling in love and remarrying much as Simon had.
The 1980s took the intermingling of honesty and humor to new levels of intimacy. With the advent of Brighton Beach Memoirs, the first in a trilogy of semi-autobiographical plays, Simon develops the stories and conflicts among several characters, rather than presenting a one-on-one confrontation. The series begins telling the story of an adolescent middle-class Jewish American boy growing up amid a dysfunctional family and yearning to escape.
Biloxi Blues, chronicled the boy's coming of age and the stunning reality of facing anti-Semitism while in the army - again mirroring some of Simon's personal experiences. Meanwhile, he has found time to write original screenplays, as well as many adaptations of his plays for the screen. His screenplays include: The Heartbreak Kid; The Goodbye Girl, which won an Academy Award nomination in 1977 and a Golden Globe Award for best screenplay the following year; Seems Like Old Times; The Lonely Guy; and The Slugger's Wife. The play was a success, and in 1991 earned both the Antoinette Perry Award for best play and the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in drama.
His next works turned back in time to reflect and reminisce about the days of writing comedy for legends such as Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and Sid Caesar. Laughter on the 23rd Floor is a far cry from the dramatic characterizations in Lost in Yonkers and Jake's Women. The play is a behind-the-scenes look at writing comedy by committee, as a group of men shout fast one-liners, each trying to top the other.
Simon wrote a memoir of his early career during which time he wrote hits such as Barefoot in the Park, and enjoyed an extremely happy marriage that ended too early when his wife lost her battle with cancer. The book received mixed reviews; People Weekly commented that it "doesn't live up to the creativity it documents. " As Simon has often found, his own work is a hard act to follow.
Simon continues to explore new terrain in his writing. In an interview with David Stearns for USA Today he said, "It is one of the most loving plays I've ever written. There's also a lot of anger. Because love is the main theme in the play, I was trying to cover all the aspects of it-those who get it and those who don't. "
As President Clinton remarked when presenting the Kennedy Center Honors to Simon, "he challenges us and himself never to take ourselves too seriously.
(Farce / 5m, 5f / Int. At a large, tastefully appointed Sn...)
Membership
Honorary member of the Walnut Street Theatre's board of trustees
Connections
Simon has been married five times, to dancer Joan Baim (1953–1973), actress Marsha Mason (1973–1983), twice to actress Diane Lander (1987–1988 and 1990–1998), and currently actress Elaine Joyce. He is the father of Nancy and Ellen, from his first marriage, and Bryn, Lander's daughter from a previous relationship whom he adopted. His nephew is U. S. District Judge Michael H. Simon and niece-in-law is U. S. Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici.