Simon, (Marvin) Neil (Vol. 11) - John Simon
JOHN SIMON
When will playwrights learn that it takes more than a string of funny lines to make a comedy? Actually, Neil Simon's The Gingerbread Lady purports to be more than a comedy, and the lines, for the most part, are less than funny. Less than funny for several reasons. 1) They traipse over the same old terrain, from sex-starvation to unquenched-thirst jokes, from kinky-sex to show-biz in-jokes, from Mafia to Polish jokes. (There are no elephant jokes.) You may not have heard precisely these jokes before, but your surprise is no greater than at hearing the triumphal march from Aida played on water glasses. 2) There are too many of them. Hardly ever is anyone, regardless of age, background, or calling, allowed to speak in anything but funny lines. Whether he is touched, anguished, or crushed, it is all converted into jokes. They end by tripping one another up, and a joke slipping painfully on the peel of the previous joke is no laughing matter. 3)...
[The entire page is 398 words long]
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