"Ultimately I don't think it is a great play and not even top-drawer Durang. I think it emerged as a success in a very weak season and appealed to the snobbishness that V&S&M's parents suffered from in naming their children: it flattered the egos of theatregoers who "got" the references and that was seemingly enough."
Durang partisans like Ben Brantley wet themselves over this after ages of dissing the bourgeois Neil Simon. Yet what did V&S use for its first act curtain? Neil Simon's "California Suite" scene w. Maggie Smith....almost word for word. Come the second act curtain, for a moving moment, they just put the Beatles "Here Comes the Sun" on the loudspeaker. Hard to go wrong with that. Durang was a very clever sketch writer. Never much of a playwright. |
