Neil Simon

A Casebook

Gary Konas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780815321323
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135598853
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

First Published in 1997.The 16 essays and interviews in this volume explore the background and works of Neil Simon, the most successful playwright in American history. Several of the entries trace Simon's Jewish heritage and its influence on his plays. Although Simon is best known as a writer of a remarkable series of hit Broadway comedies, the contributors to this book have identified a number of "serious" recurring themes in his work, suggesting that a reassessment of the playwright as a dramatist is appropriate. Three interviews with Simon and his longtime producer yield valuable facts about the playwright that will, along with the critical essays, aid the scholar seeking new insights into contemporary American drama in general and Neil Simon in particular.

Index

A

Abbott and Costello 29

Academy Award 12, 13, 169 see also Simon, Neil: awards given to

Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death 191

Albee, Edward 225

Allen, Steve 60-61

Allen, Woody 53, 64, 149

Angels in America 225-26

Anxiety of Influence, The 119

Apartment, The 130, 165

Aristode 104, 178

Artaud, Antonin 119

Artist Descending a Staircase 195

Axelrod, George 215, 219

Ayckbourn, Alan 3, 15-37 passim Stephen Joseph Theatre (Scarborough) 16

Pendon 15

works

Absent Friends 21, 24

Absurd Person Singular 21

Bedroom Farce 24

Chorus of Disapproval, A 21—22, 29-31

How the Other Half Loves 21-22, 24, 26

Intimate Exchanges 18

Joking Apart 24

Just Between Ourselves 24, 27-29, 31

Man of the Moment 21

Mr. Whatnot 17, 22

Norman Conquests, The 18, 21, 24

Relatively Speaking 20, 22, 25, 36

Revengers'Comedies, The 19, 21

Sisterly Feelings 18, 21-22

Small Family Business, A 19, 24, 31, 33

Smoking and No Smoking 19

Taking Steps 16, 21, 36

Ten...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• General Editor's Note
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chronology
• Prologue
• Neil Simon's Jewish Heritage Washington Heights Doc
• Funny, He Does Look Jewish
• Neil Simon and the Funny Jewish Blues
• Beyond Laughter and Forgetting: Echoes of the Holocaust in Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers
• "A Perfect and an Upright Man": A Reassessment of Neil Simon's God's Favorite
• Neil Simon's Dramatic Heritage Men in Fancy Clothes; or, Menander on the 23rd Floor
• Fun House Mirrors: The Neil Simon-Eugene O'Neill Dialogue
• Patterns
• "The Fruit Brigade": Neil Simon's Gay Characters
• The Ominous Apple
• They're Playing My Book: The Musicals of Neil Simon
• Dialogues
• Producing Neil Simon: An Interview with Emanuel Azenberg
• An Interview with Neil Simon
• An Interview with Neil Simon
• Contributors
• Index