I still say that Marvin Neil Simon \u2014 the only living playwright with a Broadway theater named after him (in 1983) \u2014 is a criminally overrated craftsman, whose claims to fame feature a host of underexposed characters, a litany of one-liners disguised as plot points and a legion of central figures drawn from back to front. Most of his 33 plays consist of interchangeable stories and the tired escapist gags that pepper them, mined from his days in early television; one yarn making the rounds is that he used to write a play a year whether he had an idea for it or not. But know what else? Rules are made by their exceptions, as witnessed with North Coast Repertory Theatre\u2019s current ‘Chapter Two.’ This one bears some telltale Simon missteps, but the playwright somehow gets out of his way long enough to write the kind of subtext that supports the story. Christopher Williams and co-director David Ellenstein seize on a brandable tech effort and one terrific performance to boot \u2014 meanwhile, and dast I say it: This actually isn\u2019t half-bad Simon such as New York settings go. It\u2019s a rare testament that clearly identifies the playwright as a man of far deeper constitution than he usually lets on. If you don\u2019t believe me, just ask the play\u2019s autobiographical George Schneider, a recent widower whose unhappily married gadabout brother Leo pushes George to get back into the dating game. After a glut of false starts, Leo\u2019s friend Jennie Malone enters the picture; she\u2019s an outstanding catch, but she\u2019s also riddled with emotional drawbacks of her own amid her divorce from a star football player. Both characters\u2019 hesitancy (fueled by their status as middle-agers) sparks a heated dialogue about letting go, especially as things pertain to George, still distraught over the loss of his wife. The two marry in due course, but that\u2019s no guarantee that Jennie will relinquish her command for self-respect. Simon is usually too busy polishing his gags to reveal much about his characters \u2014 accordingly, maybe he\u2019ll someday be good enough to give us the depth of George\u2019s experience as a professional author, which would lend the character some more credibility. Ditto for Jennie, a soap opera actor equally bereft of a resume. I found brother Leo (Louis Lotorto) and Jennie\u2019s best friend Faye (Mhari Sandoval) more interestingly drawn \u2014 in the first place, they have a sort-of affair neither of them wants, and their dialogue is cadenced and spirited. Still, there are some sparks of vision here, with Simon the occasionally eloquent spokesman for the universal theme of love and loss. “Go ahead and test me,” Jennie eventually chides. “If you want to leave, leave. But I\u2018m not the one who\u2019s going to walk away\u2026 If you\u2019re stupid enough to throw someone sensational like me aside, then you don\u2019t deserve as good as you got.” It\u2019s a lovely speech from actor Jacquelyn Ritz, who leaves Ellenstein\u2019s beleaguered George tongue-tied amid the profound lesson within. And it\u2019s a cinch Jennie has the show\u2019s better lines (“Just watching the telephone,” she says as she takes a call from George near the end of the piece; “nothing good on until now”). The Leo-Faye chemistry supports that of the principals awfully well. Sandoval is fantastic amid Faye\u2019s melodramatic voice and wholesale narcissism, and Lotorto makes it clear that Leo, even in middle age, never really sowed his oats. Costumer Alina Bokovikova\u2019s good fare is an absolute success in Leo\u2019s case \u2014 he\u2019s the only one on earth who wouldn\u2019t think twice about wearing that horrible suit. Marty Burnett\u2019s sets and Chris Luessmann\u2019s sound tell their own tales by themselves (and that\u2019s a good thing). This play, from 1977, was reportedly written as a tribute to Marsha Mason, Simon\u2019s second wife, who played a major role in the playwright\u2019s recovery from the anguish amid his first wife\u2019s death. For all his many, many colossal faults, Simon does chart a certain courage of conviction in his autobiographical material (his\u00a0Brighton Beach Memoirs, in fact, is a very good first installment in the coming-of-age trilogy on character Eugene Jerome). He’s 87 now, and his work (such as it is) may be done \u2014 but with\u00a0‘Chapter Two,’ we can rest easy knowing that not all of it was for naught. This review is based on the opening-night performance of Feb. 28. ‘Chapter Two’ runs through March 29 at North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987-D Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach. $41-$48. (858) 481-1055, northcoastrep.org.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I still say that Marvin Neil Simon \u2014 the only living playwright with a Broadway theater named after him (in 1983) \u2014 is a criminally overrated craftsman, whose claims to fame feature a host of underexposed characters, a litany of one-liners disguised as plot points and a legion of central figures drawn from back to […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":266700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"NCR's 'Chapter Two': For once, Neil Simon isn't all that bad","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11560],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-la-jolla-village-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}