Neil Simon: Toward Act III?

Below are notes from an article on Neil Simon, published in the journal (I think) MELUS, by Oxford University Press. 

It's dated, but the play had already been around for 15 years, and it has some good stuff in it about Simon. Enjoy!

If you would like to read the entire article, let me know and I will try to get you a copy.

Vol. 7 No. 2, Between Margin and Mainstream (Summer 1980)

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78: The conflict between Simon's sensitivity to pain and suffering and his extraordinary talent and success is central to understanding his play.

78: "I grew up in a family that split up dozens of times," he recalled. "My father would leave home, be gone for a few months and then come back, and then -- zap, the string would break and he was gone." ...according to Danny Simon, who tried to shield Neil from the brunt of it all, his brother "must have felt pain that he didn't show. He saved it for his writing."

78: Danny Simon says that after his own divroce he wanted to write a play about his experience but after writing fourteen pages he couldn't go on. It was the germ of a work "about two divroced men living together, and the same problems they had with their wives repeat with each other."

78: As Neil Simon has admitted, "I suppose you could practically trace my life through my plays... they always come out of what I'm thinking about what I am as a person."

79: Known as a surefire gagwriter, as a manufacturer of machine gun humor, he had created a kind of monster. There was always the question whether a serious play of his, unleavened by humor, would be accorded fair treatment.

81: By the playwright's own admission, he dealt with some of the really ugly, painful things in his youth by blocking them out and later relating to them through humor. To Simon, the ideal play is one where the audience laughs all night but in the last few minutes is touched by a sense of tragedy.

81: The success of the The Off Couple, produced in 1965, has convinced Simon that he could make people laugh. Having learned that he had that capability, he no longer felt compelled to produce non-stop amusement, but worked to protect the serious moments within his plays.

83: After almost two decades of criticism, it appears that the critics only partly understand Neil Simon. Walter Kerr is surely right in noting that Simon creates character and is not just a gagman. And the Village Voice's Gordon Rogoff is surely right in pointing out that telling jokes does not confer distinction or immortality....

84: "The humor is often self-deprecating and usually sees life from the grimmest point of view. Much of that, I think, comes from my childhood."

84: [Edythe McGovern:] "..his plays, which may appear simple to those who never look beyond the fact that they are amusing are, in fact, frequently more perceptive and revealing of the human condition than many plays labeled complex dramas."

85: [Edythe McGovern:] "to Neil Simon, who thinks and feels, the comic form provides a means to present serious subjects so that audiences may laugh to avoid weeping."