Word: simonizers
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...Simon's Edna is not a well-developed character; she often serves as a sounding board for Mel. Nevertheless, McPhee maintains a reasoned voice. Not surprisingly, when Edna finds a job after Mel has lost his, she also assumes his original neurotic qualities. Act Two's opening marvelously reveals this switch as Simon contrasts Mel's aimless wandering with Edna's verbal rambling. They also tend to philosophize; in the course of the play they wonder anxiously about their existence. To Edna's assertion that you either live with life's problems or get out, Mel replies that human beings...
...that despite the tortuous screams and yells that pass between Mel and Edna, they truly love and respect each other. Weiner's effort comes, however, at the expense of the staging and the more technical matters of the play. He confines the actors to small areas of the stage. Simon claims there is no breathing space in the entire city; Weiner's direction drives the point home with claustrophobic regularity...
WEINER INSISTS on adding music at the end of each act, merely cheapening the moments instead of enhancing them. Simon's comedy is often more effective when it is subtle. Neither does the production get any help from Paul Eldrenkamp's set. More reminiscent of Arthur Miller's Brooklyn than of a Bloomie's-decorated Upper East Side apartment, it demands more money or more imagination...
...Achtman and McPhee who allow us to see through the fourth wall into their characters, and ultimately Simon's view of 1970's city life. Both have precise, well-timed deliveries that bring to life lines like, "Some night I'm gonna put that air conditioner on High, they'll have to get a flamethrower to get us out in the morning." Their understanding of the characters enables us to identify with them, even if we're not as efficient at coming up with the witty thing to say at the right moment...
...Simon's study of Mel's boredom bogs down by the second act, and Mel and Edna's quarreling begins to grate. Likewise, Simon is out of his league when he attempts to portray a nervous breakdown; as a result Achtman is forced to rely on a farcical style when Mel snaps. But if, in the end, he and McPhee don't possess the passion to enflame the big emotional speeches in some scenes, they make us care about Mel's and Edna's ups and downs, triumphs and hardships. And that's no small feat...