Neil's Meal

In my attempt to read all of Neil Simon's plays, I recently located a copy of The Dinner Party, one of the last original works he presented on Broadway.  The one-act comedy (his first, I believe) opened October 19, 2000 and ran 364 performances.

The plot is about a lawyer (never seen) who invites six people, for unknown reasons, to a dinner party at a fancy restaurant in France.  We're introduced to the characters one by one, and what starts in a farce-like manner ends a little more seriously as a contemplation of relationships.

Unfortunately, like other late plays of Simon, the wit is no longer there.  The one-liners are mostly weak.  There's no point in quoting them to demonstrate this, since they can be found on every page--it would be easier to quote the good lines, but I'm not sure there are any. (At one point, a character responds to an alleged laugh line saying "That's very good..." and the first character says "Thank you, I'm rarely ever funny." Watch it, Neil.)

While there is some mystery in trying to figure out why a dinner party, and why these six people, there's not much else to carry us along, even over one act.  The characters all have their quirks, but are fairly flat, constantly talking about their feelings rather than demonstrating them. Incidentally, they're all French, but they don't seem particularly Gallic.  Not sure why Simon set the play in France except maybe he was trying something different.

Perhaps good actors could bring some life to the characters--and the original cast included John Ritter, Henry Winkler and Len Cariou--but the script doesn't give them much to work with.

Simon was in his early 70s when he wrote the play.  Maybe he was tired.