For my money, the best Neil Simon is the old Neil Simon, who wrote simple unpretentious comedies about two divorced men, a honeymoon couple, two old geezers. When Mr. Simon is making things up, he writes funny lines and hits on funny truths; when he tries to turn his life into literature, he makes truth look like a Broadway show. Still, I’d rather be at one of the slightly contrived comedies about what Mr. Simon’s life is like right now than at one of those gloomy Pulitzer prize-winning dramas about his childhood or youth or coming of age as a writer, which are all contrivance.
“Jake’s Women,” which opened last week at the theatre that bears Mr. Simon’s name, in a production directed by Gene Saks, with costumes and a set by Santo Loquasto, is half old Neil Simon and half new Neil Simon. On the upside, the play—about an aging writer trying to come to terms with the women in his life, past and present—is full of funny lines, and boasts a poignant scene or two; on the downside, it’s full of phony dialogue and embarrassing childhood memories addressed to the audience. In fact, the protagonist of “Jake’s Women” (Alan Alda), who, for purposes of plot, has a problem with intimacy, spends most of his time talking either to the audience or to a host of characters who are present only in his memory and imagination. There’s his sister, Karen (Brenda Vaccaro); his analyst, Edith (Joyce Van Patten); his daughter, Molly, whom we see at twelve (Genia Michaela) and at twenty-one (Tracy Pollan); and his first wife, Julie (Kate Burton), who died in a car accident at thirty-five. The only flesh-and-blood characters sharing the stage with Jake are Maggie, his current wife (Helen Shaver), who, for purposes of plot, is on the verge of leaving him, and Sheila (Talia Balsam), an irritating young woman whom he dates during a six-month trial separation.
I’m a sucker for non-realistic staging; bring on a ghost or two, cook up a scene between two apparitions, and I am putty in your hands: I sigh, spot metaphors, and think about going into therapy. Mr. Simon—who as far as I know is making his first attempt at non-realistic theater with this play—insists on spelling out the metaphorical content of each scene; but at least the spotlight remains firmly on the women rather than on his monosyllabically named hero. Mr. Alda is at his genial best, but it’s really the actresses whom the play showcases—particularly Miss Van Patten, who comes close to stealing the show a couple of times, and Miss Burton, who for once has a role she can sink her teeth into. Even Mr. Saks is in good form, and doesn’t, as he has in the past, merely elicit performances that re-emphasize what the play’s situation or lines have already made clear.
The play has too many endings, and it contains too many knowing observations about the craft of writing, but, for all its predictability, you find yourself wanting to see how Mr. Simon will get us to a particular preordained point. There’s honesty in the play’s closing image: as the lights fade to black, Jake hasn’t quite made the leap his author wants him to take, but he’s heading in the right direction.
Mimi Kramer
The New Yorker, April 6, 1992