Neil
Simon
A Presentation by
Hannah
McKinney
June 1, 2012
THEAT 319
Dr. Tyler Smith
Brief Biography
 Marvin Neil Simon
 July 4, 1927 – present
 New York City (The Bronx)
 Playwright, screenwriter, author
 Height of Career: 1960s
 Owner of the Eugene O’Neill Theatre (1968-1982)
 Simon Theatre
Historical Contexts
 Class
 Middle class prospering
 Gender
 The nuclear family
 Specific domestic roles
 External image
 “The American Dream”
Writing Career
 Began writing with brother, Danny Simon, for TV
 Pulitzer Prize (Lost in Yonkers); Tony Awards (20
nominations, 3 wins)
 Often Compared to: Aristophanes; Moliere; Anton
Chekov; Tennessee Williams (elements of)
 Writing Influences: Terrence McNally; August Wilson;
Anton Chekov; Tennessee Williams
Simon’s Works
 "I don't write social and political plays,
because I've always thought the family was
the microcosm of what goes on in the world. I
write about the small wars that eventually
become the big wars." – Neil Simon, The Paris
Review 1992
Shared Traits and Characteristics
 Highly comical
 Observational
 Melancholy climate
 Singular episodic plot lines
 Themes: respect for the family; conventional moral behavior
(characters are fallible); aware-ness of human limitation
 All auto-biographical in some way
 Heavily revised
Simon’s Playwriting Beliefs
 His plays are stories with “comedic moments”; they are
not comedies
 “By the time you know the conflicts, the play is already
written.” - Neil Simon, The Paris Review 1992.
 All answers lie in the foundation of the play (first 15 to 20
minutes)
 Revise, revise, REVISE!
Agenda
 "We're not indecent, we're not unloving, we're human.
That's what we are, human.” - Last of the Red Hot Lovers
 To write about the human condition and what
challenges it
 Neil Simon: “up close the American Dream is vulgarity”
 Personal: Simon enjoys observing and the writing process
 To make people laugh
 To entertain
Comedy: Comic Structures
“I find that what is most poignant is often most funny”
– Neil Simon
 Dialogue
 “Recogonizability”
 Situational comedy
 Friction between opposites / Dilemma
 Fingerprint: moment near the end of the play when a
character “will often explode in a comic summation of
events”; “a cascade of irritations”
Comedy (Cont.)
"Life is a comedy to a man who thinks, a
tragedy to a man who feels. … 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.”
– Daniel Walden (Professor Emeritus of American
Literature at Pennsylvania State University) from “Neil
Simon: Toward Act III?”
Characters
 Middle class, everyman of the 20th century characters
 Typically Jewish
 Self-doubting, self-hating, and “awkward alienated stance”
 Simon’s Dominant Character: “the trapped bourgeois
soul who finds that almost everything he yearns for is
worthless”
 Narrators incorporated in later plays (Brighton Beach
Memoirs; Bioloxi Blues; Broadway Bound)
 Eugene Jerome
Specific Plays to Note:
Traditional Simon Comedies
Lost in Yonkers
The Odd Couple
Lost in Yonkers
 First on Broadway in 1991
 Filmed in 1993
 Two boys are sent to Yonkers,
New York in 1942 to live with their
grandmother and Bella, their
childish aunt.
The Odd Couple
 First Produced on Broadway in 1965
 Revivals: 1985; 2005
 Filmed in 1968 (multiple sequels
produced)
 TV Show from 1970 - 1975
 Two divorced men (Felix Ungar and
Oscar Madison) share an apartment
but have completely different
lifestyles.
An example!
OSCAR: I'll tell you exactly what it is. It’s the cooking, cleaning and
crying. It's the talking in your sleep, it's the moose calls that
open
your ears at two o'clock in the morning. I can't take it
anymore,
Felix. I'm crackin’ up. Everything you do irritates me.
And when you're not here, the things I know you're gonna do
when you come
in irritate me. You leave me little notes on my
pillow. I told you a
hundred times, I can't stand little notes on my
pillow. "We're all out of Corn Flakes. F.U." It took me three hours to
figure out that F.U. was
Felix Ungar. It's not your fault, Felix. It's
a rotten combination.
FELIX:
I get the picture.
OSCAR: That's just the frame. The picture I haven't even painted yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VXZzaAX8EQ (starting at 2:28)
Specific Plays to Note:
Nontraditional Subject Matter
The Gingerbread Lady
 First on Broadway in 1970
 Film version (Only When I Laugh) in
1981
 Recovering alcoholic and former
cabaret singer Evy Meara returns
home from rehab only to face the
problems of her friends and family.
 Dark drama; tragic ending
Simon’s Works Today
 Broad appeal and interest
 Productions of work have been consistent since 1970s
 Recent Broadway revivals have struggled
 Period pieces
 Change in audience expectations of humor
Historical Significance
 Variety of work
 Span of work and involvement with other
prominent actors, writers, and
professionals
 Pioneered and established new forms of
comedy, especially for the stage
 Established post-war American comedy
 All post-war American playwrights can be
linked to Simon
 Wrote and produced broadly likeable
and commercially successful plays that
realistically reflected and observed
everyday life