One of the funniest plays ever by America's premiere humorist will keep Upper Valley audiences in stitches when Laughter on the 23rd Floor opens at the end of February.
The Wall Street Journal called it "old style comedy, fast and furious," and Simon himself called it "a license to kill with laughs." The play takes us back to 1953 and paints a thinly veiled—but extremely accurate—picture of the legendary young comedy writers who staffed Your Show of Shows, the groundbreaking live Saturday night comedy show headed by comic genius Sid Caesar, aided by the versatile comedienne Imogene Coca. With colleagues like Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Larry (M*A*S*H) Gelbart, the room exploded each week with riotous sketch ideas—and sometimes just plain riots. With sponsors worried that the show was "too smart" for Middle America, and the threat of retaliation if they dared to mock Sen. Joseph McCarthy ("I want to call him Joseph McNutcake"), this wild group tried to keep their jobs and their integrity.
Laughter on the 23rd Floor, directed by Catherine Doherty, will be performed from February 25-March 15, 2009, at the Briggs Opera House in White River Junction, VT. Showtimes are Tuesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. (except for Opening Night, Fri., Feb. 27 at 7:00 p.m.) and Sundays at 5:00 p.m., with matinees on Thursday, March 5, Sat., March 7 and Sat., March 14 at 2:00 p.m. For tickets and information, call 802-296-7000. Tickets are also available through the Northern Stage Web site, www.northernstage.org.
The Northern Stage production of Laughter on the 23rd Floor is sponsored by Wachovia Securities, LaValley Building Supply and Central Supply.
About the Cast
Many Northern Stage favorites return to create the chemistry necessary for this comic romp. Jimi Egan, who plays network star Max Prince, returns to the Upper Valley after an absence of over eight years. Egan starred as Guildenstern in Northern Stage's popular production of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead and appeared here in The Music Man, A Midsummer Night's Dream, You Can't Take It With You and more. In addition to his theater work with the likes of Jane Alexander and Martin Landau, he works with "Shakespeare On the Go," which takes the Bard to schools throughout Connecticut. Tony Lawson returns after his comic turns as Lumiére in Disney's Beauty and the Beast and Tito in Lend Me A Tenor, and he performed on Broadway as Thénardier in Les Misérables and on several national tours. Also returning are Kathryn Merry (Moon Over Buffalo), Andrew Pandaleon (The History Boys), Benjamin Pelteson (The Man Who Came To Dinner), B. Brian Argotsinger (How the Other Half Loves), Woodstock VT's Erik Gaetz (Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing) and Cornish native Aaron Sharff (Shadowlands). The newcomer to the cast is regional theater veteran Jillian Louis.
About the Director
Catherine Doherty co-directed The Crucible and I Am My Own Wife and has directed The Year of Magical Thinking, Deathtrap, The Elephant Man, Driving Miss Daisy, Doubt, How the Other Half Loves, A Chorus Line, Moon Over Buffalo, Lend Me A Tenor, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change!, Of Mice and Men, Private Lives and the staged reading of An Empty Plate at the Café du Grande Boeuf. She previously directed Stones In His Pockets and I Love You You're Perfect Now Change! at St. Michael's Playhouse. Before coming to Northern Stage, Catherine's credits include co-producing several Off-Broadway productions with Padua Playwrights and random.acts theatre co (of which she is a member). She was the assistant director and production stage manager of the Lincoln Center production of Normal Heart. Catherine has worked with numerous theater companies, including Paper Mill Playhouse (Milburn, NJ), The John F. Kennedy Center and Arena Stage. She is also on the advisory board of the Instant Theatre Company in Highlands, NC. While in Los Angeles, she worked in a variety of capacities with television networks CBS, ABC and Fox. Catherine holds an MFA in Performance from the University of Georgia and an MFA in Film Direction from the American Film Institute. Her short film, Family Portrait, received the prestigious Ida Lupino Award for Outstanding Film Direction from the Director's Guild of America, and she recently won two Telly Awards for video production at Northern Stage.
About the Author
Marvin Neil Simon has become so closely associated with American theater—and the American psyche—that you would think he was born on the Fourth of July. Well, he was, in 1927. Since then, he has become the unrivaled king of Broadway comedy, with more Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer. He is the only playwright to have four simultaneous Broadway shows. He has had more plays produced for film than any writer. He is the only living playwright, and only the third non-musical playwright ever, to have a Broadway theater named after him (along with Eugene O'Neill and David Belasco).
Born in the Bronx, Simon—nicknamed "Doc" for his work as an uncredited "script doctor" on several projects—wrote for a newspaper at his Army camp and, after his discharge, worked in the mailroom at the Warner Bros. studio in New York. He went on to write for the radio shows of Tallulah Bankhead and Phil Silvers, then followed Silvers to television, where he also wrote for Jackie Gleason, Red Buttons, Garry Moore and, of course, Sid Caesar. His first Broadway play was Come Blow Your Horn in 1961 (which featured an off-stage character named Felix Ungar, who would later reappear in The Odd Couple).
Over 30 of Simon's plays have made it to Broadway, and nearly all have been wildly successful, including The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Plaza Suite, The Prisoner of Second Avenue and Brighton Beach Memoirs. Awards include Tonys for The Odd Couple and Biloxi Blues, a Golden Globe for the screenplay of The Goodbye Girl (starring then-wife Marsha Mason) and a Tony AND a Pulitzer Prize for Lost In Yonkers. He earned the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and a special 1975 Tony for his "overall contribution to the theater," and he was a Kennedy Center honoree in 1995.
Simon has been married five times to four women. Joan Baim, arguably the love of his life, was struck with cancer in 1973 at the age of 38 after they had been married for 20 years and had two daughters. (The aftermath of her death is recounted poignantly in Simon's Chapter Two.) That year, he married Mason after a two-and-a-half-week courtship; they were divorced in 1982. He married Diane Lander in 1987; they divorced in 1988, remarried in 1990, and divorced again in 1998. (Knowing his penchant for autobiographical writing, she demanded that he sign a prenuptial agreement stipulating that he could not write about either her or her daughter during her lifetime.) He married his current wife, Elaine Joyce (who had previously dated J.D. Salinger) in 1999.
About the Play
Laughter on the 23rd Floor, like so many of Simon's plays, frames a very serious issue within an hysterically funny context. The year is 1953, and a group of young comedy writers are trying to write topical comedy under the cloud of the career-destroying tactics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Many prominent Hollywood names and faces suffered, including Oscar nominees Larry Parks (The Jolson Story), Howard Koch (Casablanca), Sam Jaffe (The Asphalt Jungle) and Lee Grant (Detective Story), as well as Burgess Meredith, Lloyd Bridges, Edward G. Robinson and Ring Lardner Jr., among many others, so the threat was real.
Also like many Simon works, this play is largely autobiographical, based on his work on Your Show of Shows, the groundbreaking live variety show led by the temperamental Sid Caesar and his frequent foil, gifted comedienne Imogene Coca. Other writers for the show (and its successor, Caesar's Hour) included Simon's brother Danny, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart (who later created the M*A*S*H television series) and Woody Allen. (Although Allen did not work for Caesar at the same time as Neil Simon, Danny Simon was a major influence.)
Your Show, in many ways an early forerunner of Saturday Night Live, featured a combination of comedy sketches—often with top actors as guest stars—as well as ballet and opera segments. According to Simon, "The play . . . closely resembles the real life that went on in the writers' room. Mostly we laughed, talked, argued and ate, anything to put off the inevitable writing. But when we worked, we burned the midnight oil, and sometimes burned the drapes and desktops as well. There is very little exaggeration in the play. There was also great pressure on all of us to deliver on the air, as NBC feared our show was too esoteric, to smart for the new rural audiences who were getting their first TVs. I've always believed that humor is fed by conflict."
True to form for Simon, many of the characters were based on his real-life colleagues, including Max, who inherited Caesar's insecurity and alcohol-and barbiturates habit; Lucas, who is a combination of the two Simon brothers; Kenny, based on Gelbart; and Ira, who probably combines elements of Brooks and Allen. (Brooks was forever showing up late and making fun of the others for being on time; then he would spew out some of the funniest material any of them produced and leave.)
Originally produced at Duke University, Laughter opened at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre on Nov. 22, 1993 and ran for 320 performances. Nathan Lane starred as Max; other original cast members included J.K. Simmons, Mark-Linn Baker, Lewis Stadlen (Dr. Ira Fried on Sopranos), and Bitty Schramm as Helen. Schramm is perhaps best known as the bawling ballplayer in A League of Their Own who causes Tom Hanks to utter the immortal line "There's no crying in baseball."
About Northern Stage
Since opening at the Briggs Opera House in 1997, Northern Stage has offered over 75 productions, including World Premieres such as The Shrew Tamer, Ovid: Tales of Myth & Magic and A Christmas Carol: The Musical. Other highlights include a staged reading of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Patrick Stewart and Lisa Harrow and a reading of Resurrection Blues, with the playwright, Pulitzer Prize winner Arthur Miller, in attendance. The company has twice been honored with Moss Hart Awards for Excellence in Theater from the New England Theatre Conference, for productions of To Kill A Mockingbird (1999) and All My Sons (2004), as well as an Addison Award for The Shrew Tamer (2004). The company toured their acclaimed production of I Am My Own Wife to the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, with upcoming performances in Dublin and Florida. Northern Stage also collaborated with Dartmouth College on an outdoor production of The "O" Myths, featuring international professionals and Dartmouth students.
Community support has enabled the company to sell over 35,000 tickets in downtown White River Junction each year to enjoy entertaining and thought-provoking professional theater and theater education here at the crossroads of northern New England. They have also reached out to offer residencies and workshops at over a dozen area schools. The company initiated "Project Playwright," a literacy program for fifth and sixth graders, which has resulted in over 750 original plays written by that age group.
For information or tickets, call 802-296-7000, or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . The Box Office at the Briggs Opera House is open from 5:30-9 p.m. Tuesdays through Friday, 1:00-9:00 p.m. on Saturday and 3:00-7:00 p.m. on Sunday during show weeks; tickets for all shows are available by phone or at the Northern Stage administrative office at 28 Gates Street, White River Junction, Monday-Friday from 10 am.-6 p.m. or via the Northern Stage Web site (www.northernstage.org). MasterCard and VISA are accepted.