Playwright: Neil Simon. At: Eclectic Full Contact Theatre at the Athenaeum, 2936 N. Southport. Tickets: 1-773-935-6875; www.eclectic-theatre.com; $27. Runs through: June 29
Laughter on the 23rd Floor is Neil Simon's valentine to the prickly genius of comedian Sid Caesar and the gifted, competitive, neurotic mostly Jewish menand one womanwho wrote his early 1950s pioneering TV variety show, the youngest being Simon himself. It's a sentimental play about difficult people that Simon wrote for love. Any company staging it must appreciate that fact.
Eclectic Full Contact Theatre gets it right under director David Belew, balancing the cartoonish antics within the writers' roomthe play's New York high-rise locationagainst the genuine human qualities of each individual writer: vanity, neediness, defensiveness, vulnerability, heart and the underlying seriousness of purpose with which they approach the task of being funny.
The events themselves are fictionalized ( those who were there say none of it happened and all of it is true ) so Sid Caesar becomes Max Prince ( Michael Woods ), Neil Simon becomes Lucas Brickman ( Parker Guidry ), Mel Brooks becomes Ira Stone ( Charlie Wein ) and so on. It's not about what happens in any case, because this work has less plot than anything else Simon has written. Curiously, it also is far less joke-driven than much of Simon's work, or at least his earlier work. There are many, many funny lines to be sure, but this play is character-driven.
The generally youthful Eclectic cast features Woods as Prince/Caesar. Except for being tall, he bears no resemblance to the bearish Caesar, but not to worry: He has the manic ( literally ) persona of the hard-drinking, pill-popping, driven comedian down cold. He can stare vacantly into space at one momentoff in some other realityand whirl on a dime to direct pin-point laser focus on one of his writers. The thing about Max ( and Caesar ) is that he demands no less of himself than of his writers and usually more.
Kirk Osgood as Milt Fields, Andrew Pond in the pivotal role of head writer Val, Alex Levin as Brian, Scott Edward Mills as Kenny, Lisa Savegnago as Carol and Jessica Lauren Fisher as Max's secretary and go-fer complete the cast. A true ensemble piece, each actor has his/her moments of focus in which Simon lets us glimpse behind the professional facade in an atmosphere of controlled chaos verging on combat at times. Simon is skillful, too, in deepening the play by incorporating life beyond the 23rd floor circa 1954: McCarthyism, the execution of the Rosenbergs and battles with craven network executives over America's taste in comedy.
Pat Iven's writers' room set is bare-bones but functional. The telephone is too new and the typewriter ( vanishing mysteriously in Act II ) is too old. But the show isn't about the phone or typewriter or set. This valentine is funny and wistful.