I think Green calls Simon's old Broadway audience middle class and Jewish "or Jewish adjacent" (I liked that designation). I think that audience is still around, they just spend their money on much more expensive experiences like HAMILTON or HARRY POTTER. What's gone missing in commercial Broadway is what Green calls the Boulevard Play, a somewhat derrogatory term for a light comedy or farce, often with sexual innuendos.
Simon's place in history, I think, will be remembered for extending the American stage comedy or farce into new territory. Those early plays like COME BLOW YOUR HORN and BAREFOOT and THE ODD COUPLE have a lovely melancholy to them behind the very mild naughtiness. He's not a visionary innovator, in my humble opinion, of American farce like Kaufman and his collaborators but a onetime great practioner of it. He hit his stride when the stage farce was becoming very unfashionable. I don't think the Brtis were as contemptuous of stage farce in the 1970's and 80's with their revivals of Coward as the Americans were.
The Boulevard Comedy or sex farce still survives in Judd Apatow-land. I just saw DIRTY GRANDPA last night and enjoyed it very much. But there's nothing that can compare to the mathematical compression of time and space and amorous yearning into the two hour stage comedy. |
