STAGE STRUCK opens in the living room of one Robert Simon, a failed actor, but at one time a first-rate stage manager. Without any money of his own, he now keeps house for Anne, his successful West End actress-wife, and supports this rich, ambitious woman in every way possible. But she, believing him to have…
In CALIFORNIA SUITE Neil Simon is again the witty and accurate observer of marital and family relationships. He is also at his most humane and compassionate. This humorous confection is divided into four parts, each with a different situation and different characters. In “Visitor from New York
In CALIFORWHY NOT STAY FOR BREAKFAST? has never failed to delight audiences, both young and old, with its comic treatment of the generation gap. It was a particular favourite when the English Theatre of Hamburg produced it in 1981 and again in 1989. The comedy opened at the Apollo Theatre, London, in 1973 and played…
BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE was first produced at the Booth Theatre in New York and was named the best play of the 1969/70 season. Eileen Hekkart played the mother, Keir Dullea her son Don, and Blythe Danner did the part of Jill. Ralph was played by Michael Glaser. The film version, which followed three years later…
First produced at the National Theatre in London in 1978, BETRAYAL was a popular success on both sides of the Atlantic. It won, in New York, the Drama Critics Circle Award as best foreign play and, in London, the West End Award as best play of the season. It was filmed in 1983 with Ben…
ABSURD PERSON SINGULAR takes place on three successive Christmas Eves in the kitchens of three different couples. In Act I, the “lower-class” but ambitious Hopcrofts give a party for their bank manager and his wife, and an architect neighbour. The Hopcrofts are nervous because the people they have invited might be useful to them on their…
AN INSPECTOR CALLS is usually seen as a social message wrapped in a detective story, or thriller. Penned in 1945 but set in 1912, the author was writing from his personal experience of two world wars and was warning of another one to come unless people changed their behaviour. For him this meant taking moral…
There is a time in everyone’s life when you have to get serious, quit acting like a child and start acting like a grown-up. This would seem to be the message, if there is one, in Neil Simon’s autobiographical play COME BLOW YOUR HORN. Known later in Germany under three different titles (Leg doch endlich…
Should ethics be based on the ideals of Socrates or on the real situation one faces? The author of the play sees no reason why such a serious question should not be posed in an entertaining and theatrical manner. Henry Lowenthal, long-time professor of philosophy is looking forward to a semi-retirement position at the college…
Shaw had two categories for his plays, those that were “pleasant