Word: neils
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...DUDLEY-HILLEL PRODUCTION of Neil Simon's The Good Doctor provides a warmly nostalgic evening--it brings back memories of junior high-school drama. How bad is it? So bad that it probably shouldn't be reviewed, at least not by anyone who is willing to tell the truth. But even at its worst, this production is not too innocent to offend anyone. Most of the actors look too frightened or unsure, and although there is a director, you'd never know it from the blocking or pace of the show. As in most junior high productions, whenever someone chances...
...Chekhonte for sale to various humor magazines. They are merely anecdotes, where character is subordinate to the twist ending (which Chekhov was to chop off in his later, masterful works), deriving their charm from the compassionate tone, the airy, economical descriptions, and the flashes of pain in between chuckles. Neil Simon shatters Chekhov's mood, replacing it only with his shrill Broadway yocks, heavy-handedness, and sentimentality; moreover, the inherent Semitism of his phrasing transforms the peasants of Moscow and St. Petersburg into citizens of Anatevka. On Broadway, the superb cast of polished goyem almost made you forget Simon...
...Neil Bruce...
...find. Ann Atkinson (Glenda Jackson) is a wisecracking but adorable divorcee who wants to find a monogamous man and live happily ever after. House Calls is the story of this odd couple's on-again, off-again, on-again romance, and it wants very much to be a Neil Simon comedy. It doesn't succeed, but there are times when this amiable film could pass as a Plaza Suite, or even a Chapter Two, clone...
...dances lack any internal cohesion of theme. They follow each other like soldiers of fortune, some dashing, some indifferent and some gross. No new score is offered, and the numbers are set to music as diverse as that of J.S. Bach and John Philip Sousa, Johnny Mercer and Neil Diamond, among others. The show's dithyrambic peak, "Benny's Number," is scaled with the percussive aid of Louis Prima's Sing, Sing, Sing...