Comedy / 7m, 5f (performed on Broadway with 3m, 2f) / Scenery: InteriorHilarity abounds in this portrait of three couples successively occupying a suite at the Plaza. A suburban couple take the suite while their house is being paintedandit turns out to be the one in which they honeymooned 23 (or was it 24?) years before and was yesterday the anniversary, or is it today? This wry tale of marriage in tatters is followed by the exploits of a Hollywood producer who, after three marriages, is looking for fresh fields. He calls a childhood sweetheart, now a suburban housewife, for a little sexual diversion. Over the years she has idolized him from afar and is now more than the match he bargained for. The last couple is a mother and father fighting about the best way to get their daughter out of the bathroom and down to the ballroom where guests await her or as Mother yells, I want you to come out of that bathroom and get married Wonderfully funny...The blockbuster (3rd playlet) is the wildest and most uproarious farce I have seen on a stage.-New York Daily News Set the town laughing.-The New York Times A wonderfully happy and gratifying evening of sheer entertainment... Richly funny. -New York Post

Comedy / 6m, 2f / Int.This classic comedy opens as a group of the guys assembled for cards in the apartment of divorced Oscar Madison. And if the mess is any indication, it's no wonder that his wife left him. Late to arrive is Felix Unger who has just been separated from his wife. Fastidious, depressed and none too tense, Felix seems suicidal, but as the action unfolds Oscar becomes the one with murder on his mind when the clean-freak and the slob ultimately decide to room together with hilarious results as The Odd Couple is born. His skill is not only great but constantly growing...There is scarcely a moment that is not hilarious.- The New York Times Fresh, richly hilarious and remarkably original. Wildly, irresistibly, incredibly and continuously funny.- New York Daily News

Comedy

Characters: 6 male, 6 female

Interior Set

From America's master of Contemporary Broadway Comedy, here is another revealing comedy behind the scenes in the entertainment world, this time near the heart of the theatre district. 45 Seconds from Broadway takes place in the legendary "Polish Tea Room" on New York's 47th Street. Here Broadway theatre personalities washed-up and on-the-rise, gather to schmooz even as they lose. This touching valentine to New York offers great acting roles as Neil Simon continues his exploration of the foibles and funny in the human comedy.

Successful Long Island businessman Joe Benjamin is a modern-day 'Job' with a demanding wife, ungrateful children, and wise-cracking household employees. Just when it seems things couldn't get any worse, he is visited by Sidney Lipton, a.k.a. A Messenger from God (and compulsive film buff) with a mission: test Joe's faith and report back to "the Boss." The jokes and Tests of Faith fly fast and furious as Neil Simon spins a contemporary morality tale like no other in this hilarious comedy.

1893. After a harrowing journey, recent college graduate Leon Tolinchinsky arrives in Kulyenchikov, Ukraine, to tutor Sophia Zubritsky, nineteen. Her parents, Nickolai and Leyna, inform him the village is cursed, rendering every resident as dumb as a bag of rocks. Leon must educate Sofia in twenty-four hours or fall victim to the curse himself, though teaching her, her parents, or anyone else about anything is just about impossible. To complicate matters, Leon and Sofia fall in love

Rose and Walsh follows two great literary figures and the depth and consequence of their enduring love. At a beautiful beach house on the tip of Long Island, Rose, a celebrated but near penniless author, receives nightly visits from Walsh, the love of her life and a famous writer himself. Now Walsh must go away forever, but not before securing Rose's financial future with an extraordinary proposal that promises to change everything.

Genre: Dramatic Comedy Characters: 3 males, 3 females Scenery: Interior Maureen Stapleton won Broadway's Tony Award as Best Actress for the role of Evy Meara, a popular singer who has hit the skids. After a short stay in rehab, her best friend age-defying Toby, her daughter Polly, and Jimmy Perry, a gay actor try to help her adjust to sobriety with a jolly birthday party. Enter Lou Tanner, a former lover, who ends up giving her a black eye. The party is a wash out, the "gingerbread lady" falls off the wagon and hits the ropes once again. Later rewritten by Neil Simon as the film Only When I Laugh starring Marsha Mason. "He has combined an amusing comedy with the atmosphere of great sadness. His characteristic wit and humor are at their brilliant best, and his serious story of lost misfi ts can often be genuinely and deeply touching." - New York Post "Mr. Simon's play is as funny as ever-the customary avalanche of hilarity, and landslide of pure unbuttoned joy." - The New York Times

Neil Simon Full Length, Comedy

Characters: 1 male, 7 female

Combination interior and Unit set.

America's premier comic playwright makes another hilarious foray into the world of modern relationships. Jake, a novelist who is more successful with fiction that with life, faces a marital crisis by daydreaming about the women in his life. The wildly comic and sometimes moving flashbacks played in his mind are interrupted by visitations from actual females. Jake's women include a revered first wife who was killed years earlier in an accident, his daughter who is recalled as a child but is now a young woman, his boisterous and bossy sister, an opinionated analyst, his current wife who is leaving Jake for another man, and a prospective third wife. Jake, played by Alan Alda on Broadway, and his women definitely deliver.

"Fantastically funny...Jake's Women are a wonderful crowd."-New York Post

"Full of funny lines."-The New Yorker

"One of Simon's best."-The Los Angeles Times

"Wit and wisecracks aplenty."-UPI

"Spending time with Jake's Women is a wholly justifiable diversion for the audience as well as the protagonist."-New York Daily News

Neil Simon

Full Length, Comedy

Characters: 1 male, 3 female

Interior Set

Middle-aged and married, overworked and overweight, Barney Cashman wants to join the sexual revolution before it's too late and arranges three seductions: the first, Elaine Navazio proves to be a foul-mouthed bundle of neuroses; Bobbi Michele is next, a 20-ish actress who's too kooky by half; finally comes September and Jeanette Fisher, a gloomy, depressed housewife who happens to be married to Barney's best friend.

"Mr. Simon has created a great character here...it is extraordinarily funny and yet also charming...as witty as ever, perhaps wittier."-The New York Times

"Delightfully hilarious and witty, as well as filled with wisdom about human nature...an uproariously funny author. But he is far more than that. He has a mellow and compassionate understanding of how weak and essentially well meaning mankind behaves...a genuinely brilliant play."-New York Post

Full Length, Comedy

Characters: 7 male, 2 female

Interior

Inspired by the playwright's youthful experience as a staff writer on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, with all the attendant comic drama as the harried writing staff frantically scrambles to top each other with gags while competing for the attention of star madman "Max Prince."

"Old style comedy: fast and furious."-The Wall Street Journal

"One of [Simon's] funniest...Comedy, comedy all the way."-Newsweek

"Enough laughs per minute to assure [it] a long run and many happy audiences."-USA Today

"The funniest comedy on Broadway in years and likely to remain the funniest comedy on Broadway for years."-Variety

Full Length, Comedy

Characters: 2 male, 2 female

Complete interior set

Recent widower, writer George Schneider, is encouraged by his younger brother Leo to start dating again. Which sends George into even more depression after a series of bad matches. Then Leo comes up with Jennie Malone and she's a keeper. Still, it's a bumpy trip on the road to Dreamland for these not-so-young lovers. George and Jennie stumble on, overcoming both their hesitation on the rebound and emotional neediness. In a hilarious, farcical subplot, Leo has a fling with Faye, Jennie's neurotic married friend.

"A sure smash "-Variety

"Lovely whimsical and touching and always funny...most of the time downright hilarious."-New York Post

Comedy / Characters: 3 male, 3 female

Scenery: Interior

America's premier comic playwright crosses the Atlantic for a suite of hilarious comedies set in a deluxe London hotel a sedate place until these characters check in. In Settling Accounts, the suite is occupied by an inebriated Welsh writer who is holding his long time business manager, caught absconding with the writer's money, at gun point. The villian concocts increasingly farfetched explanations of what he was doing at Heathrow with the cash.

An American widow and her daughter, in England to buy shoes, take over the suite in Going Home. At the daughter's insistence, mother spends her last evening in London with a rich Scotsman.

The hotel guests in The Man on the Floor are a married couple from New York who have lost their tickets to Wimbledon and are about to lose their suite to Kevin Costner who absolutely must have it now.

The evening ends on a funny, bittersweet note with Diana and Sidney, another chapter in the lives of two characters from California Suite. Diana, the Oscar-winning actress, and Sidney, her bisexual husband, are now divorced and are seeing each other for the first time in years. He needs money for his lover who is dying of cancer. The money is not a problem for Diana, but the realization that she still loves him is.

"Makes laughter easy "-The New York Times

Full Length, Comedy Characters: 2 male, 3 female

Interior set

Neil Simon at his most humane, compassionate best.

It's a humorous confection divided into four parts: Visitor from New York, Visitor from Philadelphia, Visitors from London and Visitors from Chicago.

In Visitor from New York, Hannah, a magazine writer is joined by her ex-husband, the question being with whom should their daughter spend the next six months? The badinage flies fast and furious but Hannah's well-wrought artifice crumbles as her fears take hold.

The Visitor from Philadelphia is a wife who arrives at the suite, catching her husband "en flagrante delicto" with a drunken hooker.

Visitors from London brings a British star as Academy Award nominee. Diana returns from the ceremony empty-handed to husband Sidney whose homosexuality will be no comfort tonight...

The Visitors from Chicago are two couples ending a disastrous vacation they should not have shared.

Comedy / Characters: 3 male, 3 female

Scenery: Interior

Here is a decidedly French dinner party served up in a chaotic mode that only a master of comedy could create. Five people are invited to dine at a first rate restaurant in Paris. They do not know who the other guests will be or why they have been invited. Tossed together in a private dining room, they have a sneaking suspicion that this unorthodox dinner party will forever change their lives. John Ritter and Henry Winkler starred in the wildly successful Kennedy Center production and on Broadway.

"A blizzard of one liners.... The audience can bank on some good laughs."-New York Daily News

"Frequently hilarious but also dangerously serious...An invitation you'll be glad you accepted."-New York Post

Comedy / Characters: 2 males, 4 females

Scenery: Interior

Mel Edison is a well paid executive of a high-end Manhattan firm which has suddenly hit the skids and he gets the ax. His wife Edna takes a job to tide them over, then she too is sacked. Compounded by the air-pollution killing his plants, and with the walls of the apartment paper-thin, allowing him a constant earfull of his neighbors private lives things can't seem to get any worse...then he's robbed and his psychiatrist dies with $23,000 of his money. Mel does the only thing left for him to do-he has a nervous breakdown and it's the best thing that ever happened to him...

"A gift for taking a grave subject and, without losing sight of its basic seriousness, treating it with hearty but sympathetic humor...A talent for writing a wonderful funny line...full of humor and intelligence. Fine fun."-New York Post

"Creates an atmosphere of casual cataclysm, an everyday urban purgatory of copelessness from which laughter seems to be released like vapor from the city's manholes."-Time

Comedy / Casting: 2m, 3f / Scenery: Var. settings

This Broadway hit is a composite of Neil Simon and Anton Chekhov. In one sketch a harridan storms a bank and upbraids the manager for his gout and lack of money. In another, a father takes his son to a house where he will be initiated into the mysteries of sex, only to relent at the last moment and leave the boy more perplexed than ever. In another sketch, a crafty seducer goes to work on a wedded woman, only to realize that the woman has been in command from the first overture. Let us not forget the classic tale of a man who offers to drown himself for three rubles. The stories are droll, the portraits affectionate, the humor infectious and the fun unending.

"A great deal of warmth and humor in his retelling of these Chekhovian tales."-Newhouse Newspapers

"There is much fun here. Mr. Simon's comic fancy is admirable."-The New York Times

Full Length, Comedy / 5m, 2f / Scenery: Interior

Al and Willie as "Lewis and Clark" were top-billed vaudevillians for over forty years. Now they aren't even speaking. When CBS requests them for a "History of Comedy" retrospective, a grudging reunion brings the two back together, along with a flood of memories, miseries and laughs.

"It's ham on wry...Simon's sure footed craftsmanship and his one liners are as exquisitely apt as ever."-New York Post

"Delicious and oddly affecting."-The New York Times

"Another hit for Simon in a shrewdly balanced, splendid and rather touching slice of the show biz life."-New York Daily News

Comedy / 7m, 3f / Int/ext. Leon Tolchinsky is ecstatic. He's landed a terrific teaching job in an idyllic Russian hamlet. When he arrives he finds people sweeping dust from the stoops back into their houses and people milking upside down to get more cream. The town has been cursed with Chronic Stupidity for 200 years and Leon's job is to break the curse. No one tells him that if he stays over 24 hours and fails to break the curse, he too becomes Stupid. But, he has fallen in love with a girl so Stupid that she has only recently learned how to sit down. "The brightest, freshest, funniest, wittiest, warmest and happiest to do on Broadway in many a day." - CBS-TV

Farce / 5m, 5f / Int. At a large, tastefully appointed Sneden's Landing townhouse, the Deputy Mayor of New York has just shot himself. Though only a flesh wound, four couples are about to experience a severe attack of Farce. Gathering for their tenth wedding anniversary, the host lies bleeding in the other room and his wife is nowhere in sight. His lawyer, Ken and wife Chris must get "the story" straight before the other guests arrive. As the confusions and mis-communications mount, the evening spins off into classic farcical hilarity. "Light, frothy and fun." - New York Post "Has nothing on its mind except making the audience laugh." - The New York Times "Neil Simon makes people laugh-a lot " - USA Today "Not only side splitting, but front and back splitting." - NBC-TV

Comedy / 2m, 6f / Int. Unger and Madison are at it again Florence Unger and Olive Madison, that is, in Neil Simon's hilarious contemporary comic classic: the female version of The Odd Couple. Instead of the poker party that begins the original version, Ms. Madison has invited the girls over for an evening of Trivial Pursuit. The Pidgeon sisters have been replaced by the two Constanzuela brothers. But the hilarity remains the same. "Very funny indeed." - New York Post "Endearing." - USA Today

Full Length, Comic Drama / Casting: 6m, 2f / Scenery: Various sets

Tony Award Best Play 1985

The second in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Neil Simon's trilogy which began with Brighton Beach Memoirs and concluded with Broadway Bound. When we last met Eugene Jerome, he was coping with adolescence in 1930's Brooklyn. Here, he is a young army recruit during WW II, going through basic training and learning about Life and Love with a capital 'L' along with some harsher lessons, while stationed at boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1943.

"A fine comedy, and another step in the process of making Simon neither so simple, nor so simplistic."-New York Post

"Joyous and unexpectedly rewarding."-The New York Times

"A play that rings with a newer, deeper, sweeter truth."-New York magazine

Comedy

Characters: 4 male, 2 female

Combination interior set.

Part three of Neil Simon's acclaimed autobiographical trilogy finds Eugene and his older brother Stanley trying to break into the world of show business as professional comedy writers while coping with their parents break-up and eventual divorce. When their material is broadcast on the radio for the first time, the family is upset to hear a thinly-veiled portrait of themselves played for laughs.

"Contains some of the author's most accomplished writing."-The New York Times

"A lovely play; warm, perceptive and gently humorous."-Newsday

"Expectedly funny and unexpectedly moving."-New York Daily News

Comedy / 4m, 2f / Int. Paul and Corie Bratter are newlyweds in every sense of the word. He's a straight-as-an-arrow lawyer and she's a free spirit always looking for the latest kick. Their new apartment is her most recent find-too expensive with bad plumbing and in need of a paint job. After a six day honeymoon, they get a surprise visit from Corie's loopy mother and decide to play matchmaker during a dinner with their neighbor-in-the-attic Velasco, where everything that can go wrong, does. Paul just doesn't understand Corie, as she sees it. He's too staid, too boring and she just wants him to be a little more spontaneous, running "barefoot in the park" would be a start... "A bubbling, rib-tickling comedy." - The New York Times "Critic weeps joyfully...I don't think anybody stopped laughing while the curtain was up last evening." - New York Daily News

Full Length, Comedy / Characters: 3 male, 4 female

Scenery: Interior

Neil Simon's first Broadway comedy smash. Alan Baker, a 30-ish swinging bachelor with time, money and women to spare, welcomes rebellious and eager 21-year brother Buddy into his den of iniquity while their horrified parents can only watch and pray. This farcical 60's romp became a hit movie starring Frank Sinatra.

"A slick, lively, funny comedy."-The New York Times