Through the 22nd of this month, the Garry Marshall Theatre out in Toluca Lake is featuring an excellent production of Neil Simon's 1993 play, Laughter on the 23rd Floor. Everyone says the play was based on the classic comedy-variety series, Your Show of Shows, which starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca and which included on its now-legendary writing staff, a young Neil Simon. More accurately, Laughter on the 23rd Floor is mostly about Caesar's subsequent series, Caesar's Hour.
What's the difference? Well, Simon's play was about Caesar's reign as the King of TV Comics coming to an end, and that happened on Caesar's Hour, not Your Show of Shows. Caesar's Hour also had a writing staff that included, along with Simon, Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller, both of whom are renamed characters in the play. (Gelbart and Belkin didn't work on Your Show of Shows and Larry especially used to get somewhat pissed at all the articles that said he did. Neither did Woody Allen, who was often credited as a Your Show of Shows writer. Allen worked on some of Caesar's later specials.)
Everyone gets this stuff wrong. Wikipedia says the character of Kenny in the play was based on Gelbart and Carl Reiner. It was just Gelbart. It also says the character of Harry Prince in the play was based on Caesar's brother, Dave. That character wasn't in the play. It was only in the 2001 TV movie of the same name, which Simon wrote using almost none of the play.
The program book bio of Neil Simon for the Garry Marshall Theater production says Simon was a writer on The Sid Caesar Show. No, he wasn't. Mr. Caesar starred in four different TV series: The Admiral Broadway Revue, Your Show of Shows, Caesar's Hour and Sid Caesar Invites You. He did do one special called The Sid Caesar Show but Simon had nothing to do with it. I could go on and on and I usually do…but this time, having made my point, I'm uncharacteristically going to stop.
Nevertheless, the production out at the Garry Marshall is first-rate. I saw the play on Broadway and while it's been a while, I think this production may be better. What I saw in New York had Nathan Lane in the Sid Caesar role. No, correct that: It had Nathan Lane playing Jackie Gleason playing Sid Caesar. He was very, very good but I thought Pat Towne, who's doing it at the Marshall, is doing it better. The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent, as well: John Ross Bowie, Lanisa Renee Frederick, Jason Grasl, Cornelius Jones Jr., Jessica Joy, Ty Mayberry, Roland Rusinek and Jason Weiss. Mr. Weiss is an understudy but you sure couldn't tell it from his fine performance as Mel Brooks Ira Stone.
And a special shout-out to Scenic Designer Alex Calle and anyone else who had anything to do with the terrific period set.
The core of this play is the Caesar doppelgänger. It's a story about the star's breakdown as his show, though hailed as a creative highpoint in the history of television begins losing ratings to programming with lower aspirations. That's why it's Caesar's Hour (where that happened) and not Your Show of Shows, which was an unqualified success. One suspects Simon wrote the play just to show what Sid went through then.
Having worked with the late/great Caesar, I absolutely believe it is an accurate portrait. Sometimes in show business, you do it right and lose to someone doing it wrong. When I was around Sid, I observed a constant procession of people telling him, "You are the funniest man who was ever on television" and the even more hurtful "How come you aren't on TV every week?" The compliments were hurtful because Sid had no answer for that question.
Imagine if you were a baseball player who could bat .365 and no team wanted you. You might be happier being a poor player because at least then you could understand your unemployment.
With Sid, the reasons had to do with his need to control, his inability to be funny (or even genuine) out of character, his inability to change with the times and his constant paranoia. Under the direction of Michael A. Shepperd, Pat Towne captured all of that perfectly while simultaneously and appropriately devouring much of Mr. Calle's lovely scenery. It was really one of the most expert performances I've seen in an off-off-off-Broadway venue. If you're close enough to Toluca Lake to get over and see it before 4/22, I recommend it.
And it reminded me what a crapshoot theater can be at times. I really, really didn't like the last show I saw at the Marshall a while back, so much so that I didn't even tell you about it here. I was regretting my already-purchased tickets to this one but boy, did it more than make up for the previous visit. Sometimes, you need to just roll the dice and go.