Contemporary Literary Criticism | Simon, (Marvin) Neil (Vol. 31) - Norman Nadel

NORMAN NADEL

[If] one boisterously clever first act could make a hit, then the term would apply to Neil Simon's "The Star-Spangled Girl."… But for a hit you need a strong second act and a zinger of a third act, and Simon hasn't come forth with either.

I don't mean that he lets his audience down entirely; there are laughs intermittently to the finish, and you could do far worse for a light evening out. What we miss is new material after that first act. We want the three characters to change somehow—to develop, deteriorate, reverse themselves, go out of their minds, do something. What they do is essentially what they were doing earlier in the play. We hope for a surprise and nothing very surprising happens. The play runs a predictable course.

Norman Nadel, "'Star-Spangled Girl': Funny—For One Act," in World Journal Tribune, December 22, 1966. Reprinted in New York Theatre Critics' Reviews, Vol. XXVII, No. 20, December...

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