45 Seconds from Broadway

by Neil Simon

Book written in the format of a play.

Genres: Plays

Hardcover

First published January 12, 2011

About the author

Marvin Neil Simon was an American playwright and screenwriter. He wrote more than 30 plays and he received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer. He was one of the most reliable hitmakers in Broadway history, as well as one of the most performed playwrights in the world. Though primarily a comic writer, some of his plays, particularly the Eugene Trilogy and The Sunshine Boys, reflect on the twentieth century Jewish-American experience.

Reviews

[Martin Denton · Rating 3 out of 5]

[This was written in 2001 when I first saw and then read this play. It was not Simon's last!]

45 Seconds from Broadway, Neil Simon's latest play, is in many ways his saddest. That's because, from where I sat, it felt very much like his last: a farewell--valedictory, if you will--to the Broadway that not so long ago celebrated him as its most prolific and successful practitioner. The Polish Tea Room, the friendly, schmoozy coffee shop on 47th Street where 45 Seconds from Broadway takes place, already feels mythical; the milieu of Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple and Plaza Suite and The Sunshine Boys seems lost forever, a vestige of a glorious Great White Way now given over, too much, to blaring poperettas and soulless extravaganzas.

So here's our premiere playwright taking a bittersweet and affectionate last look at the Broadway he knew and loved. 45 Seconds from Broadway is about a specific time and place and all that they stood for: kids from the sticks arriving in the Big City to make good; agents and artists making deals over borscht and bagels. Sure, that all still happens, but the rhythms are different, and so are the rewards. It's no coincidence that this play ends with one stage veteran heading for L.A. and a sitcom, and another to a fringe theater in London, while the starstruck girl from Ohio does Arsenic and Old Lace in a church basement in Brooklyn. No real happy endings here.

But lots to laugh at--it's Neil Simon, after all; and lots to well up at, too. The play--which is practically not a play at all, actually--tracks a dozen Broadway types from summer to spring, in four more or less typical afternoons at the Polish Tea Room. Center stage--literally as well as figuratively--is a comedian named Mickey Fox, a hard-driving wise guy with a thick Jewish accent, an endless reservoir of humor, and a heart of gold: think Jackie Mason crossed with The Dick Van Dyke Show's Buddy Sorell crossed with Auntie Mame. Mickey is starring in a successful one-man show when we meet him in the summer, and negotiating half-heartedly with a British producer named Andrew Duncan who is thinking of casting him as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof in London. By the following spring, Mickey's show is closing and the offer on the table is, well, significantly less lucrative.

Mickey banters with a sassy black actress named Bessie James (she's the one who gets the TV gig), with South African waiter-playwright Solomon Mantutu, and with recent arrival Megan Woods, a budding actress who eventually signs on as a waitress. He also has an emotional and cathartic encounter with his older brother Harry, a man who has lived in his famous sibling's shadow all his life and now asks for something in return--a boost for his own wannabe-comic son. The scene between Mickey and Harry, which is the emotional high point of the play, gives Simon a chance to offer some heartfelt truths about the nature of comedy and of being comic, and also about the toll exacted by fame on the celebrity's family. It feels personal and honest, more so, I think, than anything else Simon has written.

Mickey also meddles in the affairs of the restaurant's owners, Bernie and Zelda, an elderly Jewish couple who dispense crusty advice and free pie to the young performers who frequent their establishment. And he also finds himself enmeshed, briefly, in the rather surreal world of Rayleen and Charles Browning, a bizarre and vaguely mysterious couple who invade the cafe in each of its seasons. Charles is frail and neat and silent; Rayleen is gregarious and talkative and eccentric (if not downright wacko). I don't know exactly what Simon has in mind with this pair: is she suffering from a form of dementia, perhaps? But they're sketched with love and--what else?--enormous humor.

So, too, are the play's other two characters, a pair of upper-middle-class matinee ladies named Arleen and Cindy, who are at once 45 Seconds' most peripheral and essential creations. They interact, mostly, just with each other; they chitchat about the show they just saw or are about to see: a backer's audition for a truly terrible musical about the life of Irving Berlin (only the Berlin estate wouldn't give the rights to any songs, so the score was by another composer who wrote songs that sound like Irving Berlin songs); a symbolic drama called "My Father Was a Grape" ("I didn't think they meant an actual grape").

[Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

I acted in one (1) play in high school. I acted as Charles Browning, and I was easily the funniest person in the show, because I had the fewest lines. I was on stage most of the time, though, and was allowed to do whatever was funny as long as I wasn't showboating. No idea what Neil Simon was feeling when he wrote this, but what a clunker. None of the punchlines hit. The plot structure is mercenary.

[Lee Rush · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best Simon I’ve ever read.

I recently read this to determine if I would audition for it. I have to say, I don’t love it. I feel like it’s just a collage of NYC, but lacking in any plot or arc.

Lots of one liners and vaudevillian timing, but no real substance. I might pass on the audition.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

p. 26: What's the point here?
Lots of one-liners and snappy dialogue but very New York-ish. Sweet ending but too busy and scattered. More like a one-act. Not for us.

[Emma Herzog · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love the end

[Caitlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Try as I might, I just couldn't get into this one. It's telling that I started the play in the height of the "Save Cafe Edison" frenzy, and didn't manage to finish it until the poor cafe was gutted and gone.

I could appreciate the ode to the Edison, as the play's chilling prophesies about its fate- but not much more than that.

[Chris Clancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

明日東京でこの芝居を観に行く！
Hilariously true to the absurdity of the human predicament! Had me thinking of Edward Albee. Only through Autumn, but should be able to finish off Winter & Spring before tomorrow's Tokyo matinee. Curious as to how well the cast can pull it off in Japanese.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this play in particular is much better seen than read. It's hard to get a feel for the Polish Tea Room and the characters that inhabit it just by reading. This play doesn't have much of a plot, but with the right actors, it's perfectly charming.

[Fauzia Lakh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! But I haven't met a Neil Simon play I didn't love yet.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of Simon's better plays, but still fun!