CHT's 'Laughter on the 23rd Floor' lives up to its title
By PETER HECK pheck@chespub.com
Published: Thursday, April 15, 2010 12:47 PM CDT

CHESTERTOWN -- Throw a pack of wackos in a room and order them to be funny. That's the premise of Neil Simon's "Laughter on the 23rd Floor," the newest offering at Church Hill Theatre, and the result is a hilarious comedy with great performances from a whole cast.

Directed by Bob Chauncey, the play is based on the comedy writing team behind Sid Caesar's pioneering TV variety show in the early 1950s. Simon was one of that roomful of writers, which included Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Selma Diamond, Carl Reiner, Michael Stewart and of course, Caesar himself.

Simon's nostalgic take on those early days had its New York premiere in 1993, running for 320 performances. A London production starring Gene Wilder ran for five months in 1996. It is also available in a 2001 made-for-TV movie version directed by Richard Benjamin, for which Simon expanded the scope of the original script. The play takes place in a single room, where the weekly script for Max Prince's Saturday variety show is put together. Max is pretty clearly a fictional version of Caesar. The plot centers on the pressures from NBC to maintain ratings, which are beginning to slip as the new medium of TV makes its way into the less sophisticated Midwest. In response, the TV execs want the show to dumb down its urbane, strongly New York-flavored humor.

Simon takes this real-life situation to generate one of his best comedies. In three scenes spread out over roughly nine months, the writers squabble, gripe, insult one another, and comment on the news (heavily dominated by Sen. Eugene McCarthy's anti-red crusades). Somehow, in the process, they manage to create scripts for Prince's show. They also bond as a kind of family that somehow manages to function despite the boss's neuroses and their own.

The characters' eccentricities are at the root of much of the on-stage humor. Will Robinson plays Max Prince, the highest-paid funny man on TV. Max lives in constant fear, washing tranquilizers down with scotch, making incoherent midnight calls to his writers, and throwing up before every show. He is a constant source of malapropisms, as when he growls out, "I don't want no prima Madonnas here." His unpredictable temper is a constant menace, as all the writers know he is capable of firing any one of them on a whim.

Robinson turns in one of his best performances in this scenery-chewing role. The play's centerpiece is the rehearsal of a parody of Marlon Brando's performance in the movie "Julius Caesar," with each of the cast playing riffs on the theme. Robinson's impression of Sid Caesar playing Brando playing Mark Antony is worth the price of admission all by itself.

CHT stalwart Ed Langrell plays Lucas Brickman, Simon's self-portrait as the new kid on the team. He steps forward from time to time to comment directly to the audience. While the other characters get most of the funniest lines, Lucas gives the story its nostalgic aura. "We just made history," he says in one of his asides. Langrell's earnestness helps ground the antics of the others in the reality of learning a highly competitive craft under the heat of a weekly deadline.

Jamey Peyton is well-cast as Milt Fields, a wisecracking veteran whose theory of comedy is "quantity over quality." He makes up for a lack of self-confidence by dressing flamboyantly: he shows up in the first scene with a beret, which he credits with giving him an otherwise undeserved air of sophistication.

Val Skolsky is a refugee from Soviet Russia, with a thick accent and dour personality: the Eeyore of the cast. C. L. Rogers, whose previous CHT credits include the Romanian superintendent in "West Side Waltz," does a fine job bringing out the character's depth, and shows a great ear for the nuances in Skolsky's accent.

Tom Dorman brings an appropriately down-to-earth style to his portrayal of Brian Doyle, who comes in every week bragging about a movie or theater contract his agent is about to sign for him. The token Irish Catholic in a room full of Jews, Doyle takes constant ribbing for his wardrobe, his hairline, and his ambitions.

Ira Glass, played by CHT newcomer Trygve Lund, is a hypochondriac who invariably arrives late, bearing a tale of his latest supposedly fatal affliction. His great ambition is to have a virus named after him. Lund is appropriately manic as perhaps the most over-the-top character (reportedly based on Woody Allen), short of Max himself.

Wally Smith, another CHT newcomer, takes the role of Kenny Franks, a southerner whom the other writers tease for being a kind of ersatz Jew. Smith's Arkansas accent is a good fit for the role, and his quiet style is right for the character, whom most of the others tacitly recognize as the smartest in their bunch.

Heather Holiday plays the only woman on the writing team, Carol Wyman. She works to show that she can be "one of the guys," cursing and trading insults with the best of them. Holiday's performance combines toughness and warmth in the right proportion, and she provides some of the play's best physical comedy in the middle scene, where her character is some eight-and-a-half months pregnant.

Avra Sullivan plays Helen, the team's secretary, who aspires to being a comedy writer despite showing no evidence of a sense of humor. Sullivan plays the stereotypical bimbo convincingly; you'd never guess her previous credits include such roles as Laura in "The Glass Menagerie" and Desdemona in "Othello."

Director Chauncey said after the opening night performance that the biggest challenge in staging the play was dealing with eight or nine characters on stage together for much of the play. Getting the blocking to work required reshaping the conference table that sits center stage so all the characters are visible. Even so, audiences are advised against sitting in the first three rows so as to see the play properly.

While its salty language makes the play unsuitable for younger audiences, "Laughter" is a treat for anyone who enjoys a good laugh. Those who remember the days when Caesar, Milton Berle and Jackie Gleason were the kings of TV comedy will especially enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at the era.

"Laughter on the 23rd Floor" runs through April 25, with performances at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and at 2 p.m. Sundays. Admission is $18 for adults, $10 for students; CHT members are eligible for discount prices. For more information, call the theater at 410-758-1331.