These were followed in 1991 by Lost in Yonkers, arguably his most accomplished work, which won a Tony and a Pulitzer over stiff competition from John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation. Simon was a celebrity playwright in an age with so few of them - big enough for newsweekly covers, talk-show spots, and even a guest-starring role in a Bob Hope special.Īfter delivering a string of uninspired (though, in many cases, moneymaking) plays in the late ‘70s, Simon had the smarts to reinvent himself, reaching back to his childhood to produce the Brighton Beach trilogy, three naturalistic ensemble dramas hailed by some critics as a leap forward from his trademark gripe- and yukfests. You couldn’t get away from the man he was even more prolific than his Caesar’s Hour writers’-room colleague Woody Allen. For a quarter-century, you could count on one of his 30-plus plays or musicals to be packing ’em in on Broadway, and for one of his 25-plus films (some based on plays, some original) to turn up at a movie house near you. Simon’s wisecrack-laden comedies made him, by many estimates, the most commercially successful playwright of all time. For better and worse, Simon’s plays - in their complacency, insularity, and, yes, hilarity -connected with their audience on a level that theater almost never does anymore. But now that he’s 82 and in iffy health, and a major revival of two of his most celebrated works-the first and third parts of the Brighton Beach trilogy, Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound - is about to open, it’s hard not to feel nostalgic for the popular theater he once dominated. Bashing Neil Simon has been almost de rigueur for highbrow critics since the playwright had his first hits in the early sixties.
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