Directed by Valerie Clarke
May 8, 9 & 10, 2003

Programme Notes        [Photographs]

Neil Simon was born Marvin Neil Simon on July 4, 1927, the second son of Irving and Mamie Simon and grew up in Washington Heights at the northern tip of Manhattan. He attended New York University briefly (1944-45) and the University of Denver (1945-46) before joining the United States Army where he began his writing career working for the Army camp newspaper.

After being discharged from the army, Simon returned to New York and took a job as a mailroom clerk for Warner Brother's east-coast office. He and his brother Danny began writing comedy revues and eventually found their way into radio. Later, they worked alongside the likes of Woody Allen and Mel Brooks writing for The Phil Silvers Show.

Writing for the stage, he quickly established himself as America's most successful commercial playwrights by creating an unparalleled string of Broadway hits beginning with Come Blow Your Horn (1961) and followed soon after by the very successful comic romance Barefoot in the Park.

Simon's brother, Danny, played a major role in his writing. It was Danny who provided the inspiration for one of Simon's most enduring hits. After his divorce, Danny moved in with another divorced man, and this situation became the set-up for The Odd Couple (1966). Though Danny had begun writing the story himself, he reached a block and eventually handed it off to Simon who soon made it a Broadway smash. The film version (1968), starring Jack Lemon and Walter Mathau, was equally successful and prompted a popular television series.

During the 1966-67 season, Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Sweet Charity and The Star Spangled Girl were all running simultaneously. During the 1970-71 season, Broadway theatregoers had their choice of Plaza Suite, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, and Promises, Promises.

Still, critical acclaim came slowly for Simon and, in spite of the fact that he had had more smash hits than any other American playwright, critics continued to take pleasure in dismissing him as a mere 'writer of gags.'

In 1973, following the death of his wife, Simon reached a low point in his career with two failures The Good Doctor (1973) and God's Favorite (1976). A move to California, however, reinvigorated him and he produced a much more successful play later that year in California Suite. After marrying actress Marsha Mason, Simon went on to write Chapter Two (1977) which was considered by many critics to be his finest play to that date. They're Playing Our Song (1979) proved fairly successful but his next three plays, I Ought to Be in Pictures, Fools and a revised version of Little Me, all proved unsuccessful at the box office.

Then, in 1983, Simon began to win over many of his critics with the introduction of his autobiographical trilogy, Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983), Biloxi Blues (1985) and Broadway Bound (1986), which chronicled his stormy childhood, his brief army time and the beginning of his career in television. Suddenly the critics began taking him seriously. He followed up in 1991 with Lost in Yonkers for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

During his career, Simon has won three Tony Awards for Best Play (The Odd Couple, Biloxi Blues and Lost in Yonkers), has received Academy Award nominations for his screenplays of The Odd Couple (1968), The Sunshine Boys (1975) and California Suite (1978). He has had more plays adapted to film than any other American playwright and has written nearly a dozen original screenplays himself.

The Odd Couple premiered at the Plymouth Theatre, New York City in 1965. Of the play, Simon wrote:

'The Odd Couple. for the most part, is a sound play. The seams show a bit in the third act. I rewrote it five times out of town. I think I needed one more town.'