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| I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny | |
| Posted by: dramedy 01:29 pm EDT 08/31/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Riedel on Neil Simon and Jerry Zaks - WaymanWong 12:56 am EDT 08/31/18 | |
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| And for $150 now a days it needs to be more than a few chuckles in two hours. His switch in the 80s to a more dramatic form got him more critical acclaim in late career. And look at the play that goes wrong surprisingly recouped with half filled houses and discount codes. And wrong is laugh out loud funny. |
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| re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 03:11 pm EDT 09/01/18 | |
| In reply to: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny - dramedy 01:29 pm EDT 08/31/18 | |
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| Audiences certainly found them laugh-out-loud funny, as acoot1er says. Some of them don't hold up that well (and, of course, many of the later ones were not successful or only marginally so even when new) and perhaps you haven't seen some of them well performed. I saw 11 of the original productions of Simon stage works, going back to Promises, Promises, some of them with original casts, some of them with replacement casts (or mixes of originals and replacements). So I saw only one directed by Nichols, and I saw that one very late in the run with replacements. I have somewhat mixed feelings about Simon's output, but that his plays got huge laughs — and lots of them — during the period when he was having mostly hits is indisputable. In fact, it's even discussed in The Season that they were trying to cut laughs from Plaza Suite, partly because it seemed possible that the audience came in with a determination to laugh. They'd paid their money to see a Neil Simon play, and, goddamnit, they were going to laugh. But discounting audiences in which there may have been a tendency to over-react, during the period when he was writing mostly big hits, audiences found his plays hugely funny. Even some of the ones that were not big hits, such as The Good Doctor, had hugely funny sequences. I've rarely heard so much loud laughter from an audience as during "A Defenseless Creature" in The Good Doctor as played by Frances Sternhagen and Christopher Plummer. You can't see it in the television production, whether because of the direction or because Lee Grant didn't figure it out (perhaps time with an audience would have helped) or because it needs an audience, but with Sternhagen and Plummer, the audience was screaming. So I don't know which Simon plays you've seen or in which productions, and different people have different senses of humor. I've certainly sat stone-faced at shows where the audience around me was laughing. But despite my feeling that Simon wrote only a small number of plays that have much chance of lasting, many of them played as very, very funny. It may have been that they captured the zeitgeist, but it wasn't just a New York or Jewish thing as they thrived on tour and in stock and in regionals and in the movies. They're not always easy to play. In many of them, there's a rhythm that has to be found, but actors can't just play the rhythm. They have to be real, but also find the rhythm of the laughs. And as I said the other day here, even if only three or four of his plays hold up in another 50 years, that's a lot for any playwright, even if it means that 90 percent of his plays do not hold up. Even if only The Odd Couple holds up, that's something of which any playwright would be proud. |
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| re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny | |
| Last Edit: WaymanWong 12:29 am EDT 09/01/18 | |
| Posted by: WaymanWong 12:26 am EDT 09/01/18 | |
| In reply to: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny - dramedy 01:29 pm EDT 08/31/18 | |
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| Comedies come in all types - slapstick farce, drawing-room, absurdist, etc. - and what makes one show ''laugh-out-loud'' funny is so subjective. I'm sure we've all had the experience of sitting at a comedy where everyone else is uproariously laughing, while we sat stony-faced. Or we found something hilarious, but the rest of the audience didn't. However, I think we can agree that comedy doesn't get its due at awards time. Theater prizes usually go to ''serious'' dramas. Take ''The Play That Goes Wrong'' and ''Significant Other,'' which the Tonys snubbed (except for the fall-apart scenery to the former). I had a far better time at those two comedies than I did at the highbrow, Tony-nominated dramas for Best Play. I've now seen ''The Play That Goes Wrong'' excerpt (below) many times, and it still cracks me up. |
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| Link | 'The Play That Goes Wrong' from 2015 Royal Variety Performance |
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| re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny | |
| Last Edit: KingSpeed 04:19 am EDT 09/01/18 | |
| Posted by: KingSpeed 04:18 am EDT 09/01/18 | |
| In reply to: re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny - WaymanWong 12:26 am EDT 09/01/18 | |
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| Interesting. I haven't seen it because a close friend of mine walked out at intermission and would've left earlier if he could've. He said it was obnoxious bad knock off of Noises Off. He's thinking about going back though, wondering if he was just in a bad mood. | |
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| re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny | |
| Posted by: WaymanWong 02:07 pm EDT 09/01/18 | |
| In reply to: re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny - KingSpeed 04:18 am EDT 09/01/18 | |
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| Again, comedy is so subjective. I doubt ''Noises Off'' was the very first farce about an amateur theater company. And I've seen others, like ''Footlight Frenzy.'' It's all in the execution. Give this ''Play'' a chance. Who couldn't use a good laugh or two? |
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| re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny | |
| Posted by: davei2000 03:49 pm EDT 09/01/18 | |
| In reply to: re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny - WaymanWong 02:07 pm EDT 09/01/18 | |
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| "Play" isn't at all like "Noises Off," which has a structure; it builds. "Play" is one gag after another. I laughed at many of them, but by the end of the night I was weary of it. | |
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| re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny | |
| Posted by: WaymanWong 04:05 pm EDT 09/01/18 | |
| In reply to: re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny - davei2000 03:49 pm EDT 09/01/18 | |
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| To me, Act III of ''Noises Off'' can be wearying. My favorite part is Act II. | |
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| re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 04:35 pm EDT 09/01/18 | |
| In reply to: re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny - WaymanWong 04:05 pm EDT 09/01/18 | |
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| For me it's the reverse. I find Act Two remarkably unfunny for all its busyness, but Act Three, at least with the original Broadway cast, was funny till its last moments. But most people are with you. | |
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| re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 02:28 pm EDT 09/01/18 | |
| In reply to: re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny - WaymanWong 02:07 pm EDT 09/01/18 | |
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| Well, Noises Off is not about an amateur theatrical company. But George Kelly's 1922 The Torch Bearers is. | |
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| re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny | |
| Last Edit: BroadwayTonyJ 04:02 pm EDT 08/31/18 | |
| Posted by: BroadwayTonyJ 04:01 pm EDT 08/31/18 | |
| In reply to: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny - dramedy 01:29 pm EDT 08/31/18 | |
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| Regarding Simon's plays and assuming we are including his musicals, I think it depends on the show, the cast, and the direction. For example, Henry Winkler and John Ritter in The Dinner Party, Martin Short in Little Me, Nathan Lane in The Odd Couple, and Sean Hayes and Molly Shannon in Promises, Promises nailed every single laugh in their respective shows. I laughed out loud a lot at all those shows. Just remembering Sean Hayes trying to sit down on Tony Goldwyn's goofy office chair makes me laugh pretty hard right now. That said, I don't think you could successfully revive any of Simon's shows on Broadway today without Nathan Lane in his some of his plays or Hugh Jackman in a couple of his musicals, unless you can find actors who are just as funny or as big a draw. I've recently seen productions of both Brighton Beach Memoirs and Lost in Yonkers in Chicago that made me laugh out loud a lot, primarily because the actors playing the kids in the shows were so funny. |
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| re: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny | |
| Posted by: scoot1er 02:34 pm EDT 08/31/18 | |
| In reply to: I find his plays amusing but not really laugh out loud funny - dramedy 01:29 pm EDT 08/31/18 | |
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| Had you seen the original production with the original casts directed by smile Nichols (all of which I was lucky enough to have seen) you would have found them, as you say, laugh out loud funny. In fact, they were hysterical. The films, as good as some of them are, don’t even come close to capturing the electricity in the air the the theatres, and there is no way to replicate that. | |
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