Between 1961 and Y2K, Neil Simon was represented on Broadway by thirty plays, winning four Tony Awards (one honorary) and the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama (“Lost in Yonkers”). The plays were basically comedies, many with serious undertones. As a measure of his importance in those decades, the Alvin Theatre on West 52nd Street was re-named the Neil Simon Theatre during its 1983 run of his autobiographical “Brighton Beach Memoirs.”
Simon’s plays were/are nearly all firmly tied to the time and tone of then-prevailing social mores. While a goodly number of the laugh lines still work, much of the dialogue and many of the situations are dated; some among them make light of personal interactions that we now regard with a degree of dismay. Time has not been kind to the Simon tone.
Simon’s plays are still seen on high school and community stages, but professional productions, even short of Broadway, are rare. Which makes the current Broadway revival of his 1968 “Plaza Suite” an anomaly.
