ONLY two playwrights have more than one hit currently running on Broadway: William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing and Two Gentlemen of Verona) and Neil Simon (The Prisoner of Second Avenue and one of TIME'S top ten of 1972, The Sunshine Boys). When Mr. Shakespeare's representative announced that he was unavailable, Associate Editor Stefan Kanfer settled for an interview with Neil Simon. At 45, Simon retains the astonished demeanor of a man who has just heard a loud noise. It is probably the sound of a cosmic cash register. In nine years Simon has become a theatrical legend. His second play, Barefoot in the Park, grossed more than $9,000,000 and played in 14 languages (plus television). Thereafter, as regular as the Internal Revenue Service, Simon has produced approximately one hit a year, among them The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite and The Last of the Red Hot Lovers. At one time he had four shows running simultaneously, a Shavian feat. In his spare time he confected the books for two successful musicals, Sweet Charity and Promises, Promises, and wrote several movies, among them the new and delightful Heartbreak Kid. Still, with all the disproportionate rewards (Simon owns a plush town house, a country place, a Broadway theater, real estate, cattle and, very possibly, the Atlantic Ocean), he seems less than joyful. He has been described, too often, as a mechanical "yockmeister" whose characters are only scan deep. Moreover, the savor seems to have gone out of his triumphs. Another Simon smash is no longer news; it would take a failure to astonish anyone, and Simon seems incapable of one. All of which drove Simon into a deep depression last year, a gloom from which he is only beginning to emerge. He is, in brief, a character in a Neil Simon play. In preparing an Essay on Simon and American humor, Kanfer found that the notes from his interview with the playwright mystically rearranged themselves into dramatic form. 2 a.m. on Third Avenue, Manhattan. NEIL SIMON is walking his shaggy dog and, improbably, swinging a tennis racket. An AMORPHOUS MASS suddenly takes the shape of an ageless human being. It taps SIMON on the shoulder.
SIMON
Stand back! This is a deadly weapon.
(Brandishing racket.)
AMORPHOUS MASS Listen, a mugger you could fool. Me you can't.
SIMON Sorry. It's just that I haven't stopped flinching since I was attacked.
A.M By a critic?
SIMON By a man who came up behind me, knocked me down and yelled, "That'll teach you to call me a fag!"
A.M.
Like a scene in a Neil Simon play.
SIMON You know me?
A.M.
Does the hand know the glove? You don't recognize?
SIMON No.
A.M.
You know when the critics write, "Opening night at Neil Simon's new comedy the audience laughed as one"?
SIMON Yes...
A.M.
I'm the one. I come in, I laugh at the seats. I laugh at the ushers. The house lights dim, I laugh at the darkness. I laugh at the sets and costumes. By the time I hear the lines I'm already weak, a total setup for your gags.
SIMON But I don't write gags. A gag is Fred Allen saying a man is so bald he car ries his dandruff in his pocket.
AM And you write?