Theater: Laugh Orgy

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Of all the theatrical jesters in the U.S., Neil Simon is king. His latest comedy, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, is just what one might expect, a laugh orgy. But to analyze the source of laughter is more difficult than spotting a neurosis, though the two may well be related.

Ethnically, Simon's humor is Jewish, though not in the sense of dialect or In jokes. He is a master of the self-protective, self-depreciating putdown. One makes a clown of oneself before anyone else does it. Nationally. Simon is as American as surly waiters and defective appliances. His humor is the distilled hangover of the American dream.

Ever since The Odd Couple he has been probing the failure of one specific dream, the American marriage in the middle years. When did the Stardust turn to soot? Barney Cashman (James Coco), a seafood restaurateur, doesn't know. Forty-seven years old and roly-poly, he has spent 23 years in rectitudinous monogamy. He not only feels that life is passing him by, but also that death is relentlessly creeping up on him. He decides to have a love affair. The first girl (Linda Lavin) invited to his mother's vacant apartment is married, but she seems to count every minute out of the sack as if she were a concupiscent mathematician. Her terminal smoker's cough is a comic fringe benefit. Would-be playgirl No. 2 is a kooky pot smoking actress (Marcia Rodd), and No. 3 is Coco's wife's best friend (Doris Roberts), a moralizing Xerox copy of the Mrs.

Like Molière. Coco never makes it with any of them, partly because he has no more agility for adultery than he would for tennis, and partly because he is a thoroughly decent man whose conscience renders him virtually impotent. Behind the laughs lies Simon's most serious play. In some peculiar way. comedy is no laughing matter. It is remarkably moral. It hopes to reform by ridicule. While it may seem like a strange thing to say, the only proper forebear of Neil Simon would be someone like Moliere. This is the kind of playwright who peppers the society's precepts with a stinging humor. In his later plays Simon is saying a dead-serious thing —that the Judeo-Christian ethic as applied to a husband-and-wife relationship is bankrupt. Men and women are supposed to be true to one another until death do them part, but that is not what happens. However, Simon is not sufficiently perceptive or honest when he suggests that adultery is some sort of casual byplay. Adultery is either revenge or renaissance, and it is usually a coroner's report on a marriage.

Simon ought to risk more seriousness. The wine of wisdom is in him, and he ought to let it breathe longer between the gags.