It's admittedly less Neil Simon than what Neil Simon represents.
Simon's work is so sweet and heartwarming that it gets overproduced. Every regional theatre does a Simon piece at least every two years (partly because he's like the #1 most effective way to get wealthy old ladies into theatre seats).
Now, sweet and heartwarming has a place, but the success of people like Neil Simon leads to more and more of that same sort of stuff getting written and produced and less and less of real challenging art, until the theatre is so overrun by schlocky pseudorealism that going to a regional theatre is like seeing a sitcom brought to life. And hey, I choose to blame that in part on Neil Simon.
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Date: 2004-01-12 05:06 pm (UTC)Simon's work is so sweet and heartwarming that it gets overproduced. Every regional theatre does a Simon piece at least every two years (partly because he's like the #1 most effective way to get wealthy old ladies into theatre seats).
Now, sweet and heartwarming has a place, but the success of people like Neil Simon leads to more and more of that same sort of stuff getting written and produced and less and less of real challenging art, until the theatre is so overrun by schlocky pseudorealism that going to a regional theatre is like seeing a sitcom brought to life. And hey, I choose to blame that in part on Neil Simon.