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December 18, 2003
TT: Worm watch
I'm thinking of a famous 20th-century author who used to be immensely popular for his comedies, which made him the most successful commercial playwright of his generation. For a brief time he was even taken seriously by the critics, who saw in his work a reflection of the spirit of the age, and who also thought that at least some of his plays might have a permanent life in revival. Then he hit a bad patch, turning out a string of ineffective scripts at the very moment that a new generation of theatergoers was looking for something new. Tastes changed, and he woke up one day to find himself unfashionable.If you thought I was talking about Neil Simon, whose Rose's Dilemma opens tonight at the Manhattan Theatre Club (and which I will be reviewing in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal), you were right. But with one small addition, the same things could be said of Noël Coward. The difference is that Coward lived long enough to see the worm turn a second time. Producers and critics sorted through his prolific output and came to the conclusion that five of his plays--Private Lives, Present Laughter, Blithe Spirit, probably Hay Fever, and possibly Design for Living--were classics of their kind. They began to be revived with increasing regularity, and Coward himself contrived to write and star in one last semi-autobiographical play, A Song at Twlight, that solidified his reputation as something more than a mere commercial playwright. Since then, the worm has remained more or less stationary, and Coward continues to be regarded as an important figure in 20th-century theater.
Will anything like that happen to Neil Simon? Certainly a few of his plays, in particular The Odd Couple (which had the advantage of having been made into a very successful movie), are still performed, and it may well be that time will sift through the rest and find another three or four that remain viable. That's all it takes. On the other hand, I recently spoke to a friend of mine who has staged and acted in several Simon plays and who finds them terribly dated. That makes sense to me, for Simon has always struck me as essentially a writer of live-action situation comedy--a genre whose rules he helped to codify back in the Fifties--and outside of The Honeymooners and Cheers, precious few sitcoms have remained watchable over the long haul.
Still, I could be wrong. A lot of smart people, after all, were wrong about Noël Coward. And whatever the reception of Rose's Dilemma, it will be interesting to see what happens to Neil Simon's oeuvre in the course of the next few years. I don't expect him to turn out to be the American Coward--but stranger things have happened in the theater. Did anyone expect Tennessee Williams' work to date as completely and irrevocably as it did?
Moral: if you want to hear God laugh, make a plan. If you want to hear Him howl, try to second-guess posterity.
Posted December 18, 2003 1:21 AM
