Laughter on the 23rd Floor
The super-prolific Neil Simon was in his mid-60s when this semi-autobiographical, bittersweet comedy opened on Broadway in November 1993. It enjoyed a well received but (for Simon) relatively brief eight month run with Nathan Lane in the role of Max Prince.
The character of the brilliant but eccentric Prince was based on pioneering star of US television comedy, Sid Caesar, in whose writers’ room Simon got his first big break. In this New Theatre production, Lynden Jones gives Prince an edgy, febrile quality which balances the non-stop wisecracking humour and signals the darker heart of the play.
Two things are bothering Max as he prowls the office on the 23rd floor. It’s where his team of ace writers agonise over the crafting of his trademark sophisticated comedy and if he’s unhappy, they’re nervous. It’s 1953 and television’s demands are shifting as the powerful networks spread across the US getting dumber all the way.
The other shadow on their horizon is the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-Communist witch hunts. In the play, realisation is slowly dawning that beyond the bagel-led hilarity of their eyrie, a kind of state-sanctioned cultural terrorism is being born. Few understood, at that point. that it would change the face of US arts and entertainment for a generation as some of the most talented and outspoken writers and performing artists fell foul of McCarthy’s blacklist.
Simon deftly sketches in these issues as the writers wrestle with their boss’s latest paranoia. The issue of censorship and self censorship becomes an underlying theme in this unusual comedy that becomes angrier with each passing “tish-boom” moment.
We don’t necessarily associate Neil Simon with political writing but given the way freedom of speech and other once-givens of democracy have been eroded in law post 9/11 (here as well as in the USA) this play now has a startling relevance that was absent in 1993/4.
In this excellent independent Sydney production, Alice Livingstone has directed her company of nine with verve and assurance. The casting is spot on and the standard uniformly high. Les Chantery and Nicholas Papademetriou have the best of it as two writers whose hypochondria and low rent-bling style - respectively - are meat and potatoes to gifted actors.
Historians of New York comedy would have a ball working out who each member of the team might represent. (Chantery’s perpetually brain-tumoured Ira Stone is the young Woody Allen, for instance.) There’s Oliver Wenn as the new guy, Lucas, James Bean as the Russian emigre; Barry French is the dreamer Brian - always about to crack Hollywood; Beccy Iland is Carol, the only woman in the team - who wants to be known only as “a writer” and Elisha Oliver is Helen, the secretary who yearns to write comedy but has the timing of a dead bat.
The production team is as noteworthy: Mathew Halpin’s set and Spiros Hristias’s lighting are a witty homage to a TV studio setting with doors on flats and no pretence at realism; Aasa Neeme’s costumes span the possibilities of 50s New York Jewish and Simon Stollery deserves a special mention as dialect coach - most accents remain rusted on solid throughout.
As a play Laughter on the 23rd Floor delivers more than it promises in laughter and classic New York-Jewish showbiz entertainment. As a production, Laughter on the 23rd Floor is classy and accomplished. Just the thing for a pre-Chrissy outing.
Laughter on the 23rd Floor New Theatre, 542 King St, Newtown to December 17; ph: 9519 8958 or www.newtheatre.org.au
