The Collected Plays of Neil Simon Volume IV

By Neil Simon

This volume contains five plays: LOST IN YONKERS, RUMORS, JAKE'S WOMEN, LAUGHTER ON THE 23RD FLOOR, and LONDON SUITE. LOST IN YONKERS not only won a Tony Award it also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1991.
Set during World War II, LOST IN YONKERS is about two boys who have to spend several months with their Old World grandmother after their mother dies and their father has a job that requires him to travel. The grandmother is less than thrilled to have the boys and she warns them that she runs a tight ship and that they are expected to do what she tells them. She is a real harridan and the boys are frightened of her. The old woman had a very hard life and she wants her children and her grandchildren to be tough enough to take what life dishes out. She is not the kind of grandma that buys her grandkids toys and bakes them cookies. She seems not to understand that family love goes a long way toward easing life's harsh realities.
RUMORS is a fun farce about a dinner party that starts out with the guests arriving to discover their host unconscious, suffering from a gunshot wound to his ear and his wife is missing. As the guests arrive, the consensus is that the man tried to kill himself because his wife left him and they decide they have to protect his reputation by covering up the his attempted suicide.
LAUGHTER ON THE 23RD FLOOR is about a comedic television show in the 1950s struggling to cope with the demands of the network and their sponsors. It is mainly about the star of the show and his crew of comedy writers.
LONDON SUITE is a series of vignettes about the goings on in a particular set of rooms in a hotel in London.
JAKE'S WOMEN is about a writer who seems to find talking to his imaginary women more compelling than talking to the actual women in his life. Mostly it is about the destruction of his marriage to his current wife due to his attachment to his previous wife who died.

I enjoyed RUMORS the most. It is a fun-filled, laugh-filled farce and simply a LOL joy to read. I also liked LAUGHTER ON THE 23RD FLOOR, with its lively repartee and LONDON SUITE because it was just light and fun. JAKE'S WOMEN was boring and LOST IN YONKERS was excruciating. That old grandma was not a pleasant character with which to spend an afternoon.