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 horribly precisely that, is how stupid they are….

This is not a play, but a premise for a play. Everything is based on stupidity. Why? What the hell? What is so interesting about stupidity?…

[But] one must remember that this is Simon's 19th play, and he is entitled to the occasional dash of drivel for the record.