Simon, (Marvin) Neil (Vol. 31) - Clive Barnes

CLIVE BARNES

To say that I am at a loss for words is merely to put a cliche where my heart should be.

But I truly am at a loss for words. I probably admire Neil Simon more than most of my colleagues. He is a major playwright, a comedian who survives fashion through the honesty of his comic agony.

But here I am at a loss for words. Fools … is simply terrible. I am not only at a loss for words, I am even at a loss for a cliche. Unfortunately, Simon is here not at a loss for either.

It is a one-joke play. And Simon tells the same joke over and over—and much moreover—again. It is a Russian village. In the Ukraine. Scarcely Russia, but near enough. The village is cursed, it is cursed with stupidity.

Everyone—except a schoolmaster who unexpectedly arrives to give this strange concept some kind of conceivable purpose—is stupid. "How stupid are they?" you ask. Think of stupidity at its most obvious and least amusing, and that, so...

[The entire page is 290 words long]

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