Dispiriting

As promised, here's my post on Neil Simon's last play. I wish it were most positive.

His last new production, Rose's Dilemma, was presented to the public in 2003.  It was done off-Broadway.  When new Neil Simon can't debut on Broadway, there's trouble.  Maybe that's why he gave it up.

I recently read the play and think Simon, one of the greatest comedy writers of our age, understood it was time to get out of the game. He'd written some weak plays, but Rose's Dilemma is the worst I'm aware of.  The characters are shallow and the gags hopeless.

In his early plays, such as Barefoot In The Park and The Odd Couple, the comedy seemed to flow so easily.  Sure, his characters would sometimes make wisecracks, but they were funny wisecracks.  He would go on to become more "serious" but in later work such as his Brighton Beach trilogy, the characters still made us laugh effortlessly.  But I don't think he wrote a fully realized play after Lost In Yonkers in 1991.

Rose's Dilemma (what an awful title--every play involves a lead character with a problem, and Rose's is pretty weak--it's more of a situation than a dilemma) is a four-character piece.  Rose is a playwright who hasn't had a hit in a while.  She had a lover, Walsh, a successful novelist who dropped dead of a heart attack. (The characters seemed to be based vaguely on Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett.) She now sees him as a ghost.  Walsh--though he's just a figment of Rose's imagination--wants Rose to hire some unknown writer named Clancy to finish his last novel and make Rose a lot of money. (There's talk that Rose is in financial trouble, though there's little evidence of it, and no reason to believe it.)

Rose is attended to by Arlene, who's also a writer (everyone in this play is a writer) and turns out to be the daughter Rose abandoned.  I suppose in the hands of a talented playwright at the top of his game, something could be made of this.  Instead, all we get are a lot of lame wisecracks and a situation that's amazingly uninvolving.

The story behind the play is more fascinating.  Mary Tyler Moore was set to star, but Neil Simon sent her a nasty note demanding she learn her lines, and she walked.  Maybe she was looking for an excuse to exit. And maybe Simon felt nasty because he knew he was written out.