-If Broadway ever erects a monument to a patron saint of laughter, Neil Simon will have to be it.- --Time Magazine

This first volume of The Collected Plays of Neil Simon contains the triumphs that put Neil Simon's unique brand of comic genius on the American stage, and made him the most successful playwright of his generation. His mixture of verbal wit and beautifully crafted farce, ethnic humor and insight into universal foible, and above all compassion and understanding, make even his sharpest barbs touch the heart as well as the funny bone. These seven plays,...

"I suspect I shall keep on writing in a vain search for the perfect play. I hope I will keep my equilibrium and sense of humor when I'm told I haven't achieved it. At any rate, the trip has been wonderful. As George and Ira Gershwin said, "they can't take that away from me." --From Neil Simon's Introduction

And they can't take away the pleasure that Neil Simon's plays have given literally millions of theatergoers in the past quarter of a century. They and the critics agree that a trip to see any one of this master of comedy's stage triumphs ranks among the most wonderful experiences that...

The first in Neil Simon s "Eugene Trilogy," followed by Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound

Winner of a New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play
Meet Eugene Jerome and his family, fighting the hard times and sometimes each other with laughter, tears, and love. It is 1937 in Brooklyn during the heart of the Depression. Fifteen-year-old Eugene Jerome lives in Brighton Beach with his family. He is witty, perceptive, obsessed with sex, and forever fantasizing his baseball-diamond triumphs as star...

A winning combination of touching personal memories and reflections, anecdotes about the writing life, and hilarious stories about some of the biggest names in the entertainment business, "Rewrites" is "one wonderful read" (Larry King, "USA Today"). of photos.

In his critically acclaimed Rewrites, Neil Simon talked about his beginnings -- his early years of working in television, his first real love, his first play, his first brush with failure, and, most moving of all, his first great loss. Simon's same willingness to open his heart to the reader permeates The Play Goes On.
This second act takes the reader from the mid-1970s to the present, a period in which Simon wrote some of his most popular and critically acclaimed plays, including the Brighton Beach trilogy and Lost in Yonkers, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize....

Don't read this. It's boring. You want to have fun? Just look at any one of the side-splitting, eye-opening cartoons in this collection by Bruce Eric Kaplan.
Yes, he's the one whose drawings have the little initials BEK in the corner. You've probably seen them in The New Yorker. They're in there almost every week, for God's sake.
His stomping ground is the usual territory of classic literature -- love, relationships and the search for a meaningful existence. Like the work of James Thurber, his warring husbands and wives, world-weary children and hostile therapists convey the...

Full Length, Comedy

Characters: 2 male, 2 female

Interior Set

In her beach house in the Hamptons, celebrated writer Rose Stern stands at a crossroads: she hasn't written anything in years and money is getting short. Her former lover, literary lion Walsh McLaren, offers her-from beyond the grave-an opportunity to regain her celebrity and gross millions. It's not going to be easy and a "ghost" writer is required setting in motion another touching and unpredictable romantic theatrical by America's premier Pulitzer Prize-winning comic playwright.

Full Length, Comedy

Characters: 2 male, 2 female

Complete interior set

Recent widower, writer George Schneider, is encouraged by his younger brother Leo to start dating again. Which sends George into even more depression after a series of bad matches. Then Leo comes up with Jennie Malone and she's a keeper. Still, it's a bumpy trip on the road to Dreamland for these not-so-young lovers. George and Jennie stumble on, overcoming both their hesitation on the rebound and emotional neediness. In a hilarious, farcical subplot, Leo has a fling with Faye, Jennie's neurotic married friend....

Comedy

Characters: 6 male, 6 female

Interior Set

From America's master of Contemporary Broadway Comedy, here is another revealing comedy behind the scenes in the entertainment world, this time near the heart of the theatre district. 45 Seconds from Broadway takes place in the legendary "Polish Tea Room" on New York's 47th Street. Here Broadway theatre personalities washed-up and on-the-rise, gather to schmooz even as they lose. This touching valentine to New York offers great acting roles as Neil Simon continues his exploration of the foibles and funny in the human comedy.