Script Analysis

June 4, 2013

Playwright

Neil Simon is the world’s most successful playwright. He has had dozens of plays and nearly as many major motion pictures produced. He has been showered with more Academy and Tony nominations than any other writer, and is the only playwright to have four Broadway productions running simultaneously. His plays have been produced in dozens of languages, and have been blockbuster hits from Beijing to Moscow. His true success, however, is in his unique way of exposing something real in the American spirit.
 Born in the Bronx on July 4, 1927, Marvin Neil Simon grew up in Manhattan and for a short time attended NYU and the University of Denver. His most significant writing job came in the early 1950s when he joined the staff of YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS, a landmark live television comedy series. [ … ] By the 1960s, Simon had begun to concentrate on writing plays for Broadway. His first hit came in 1961 with Come Blow Your Horn, and was soon after followed by the very successful comic romance Barefoot in the Park.
 Simon’s brother, Danny, who also worked on YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS, played a major role in his writing. Eight and a half years older, Danny brought Simon into the business and had shown him the ropes. In fact, it was Danny who provided the inspiration for one of Simon’s most enduring hits. After his divorce, Danny moved in with another divorced man, and this situation became the set-up for The Odd Couple (1966). Though Danny had begun writing the story himself, he reached a block and eventually handed it off to Simon who soon made it a smash on Broadway. Starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, the 1968 film version was equally successful and prompted a popular television series.
 By 1973, Simon was a major voice in contemporary comedy. But, that year he entered a low period in his life, when his wife of twenty years, died. Some time later, he met the actress Marsha Mason, and they were married. His 1977 play, Chapter Two, dramatizes the grief of a newly remarried man trying to start over after his wife has died. Chapter Two was considered one of his finest works and he followed it with a musical, They’re Playing Our Song.
 Throughout his four-decade career, Simon has drawn extensively on his own life and experience for materials for his plays. Many of his works take place in the working-class New York neighborhoods he knew so well as a child. One of Simon’s great achievements has been the insightful representation of the social atmosphere of those times in New York. [ … ] Simon found his greatest critical acclaim, and for his 1991 follow-up, Lost in Yonkers, Simon was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

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Plot Summary

Corie and Paul are newlyweds, fresh from their honeymoon. Corie is still enthralled by her recent sexual awakening and the adventure that comes with youth and marriage. She wants their passionate romantic life to continue at full speed. Paul, however, feels it is time to focus on his burgeoning career as an up-and-coming lawyer. When they don't see eye-to-eye about their apartment, their neighbors, and their sex drive, the new marriage experiences its first patch of rough weather.

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Characters

Corie Bratter

A newlywed, Young, pretty, and full of enthusiasm for the future. She is also impulsive and adventurous. 

Paul Bratter

A newlywed and Corie’s husband who is very conservative. He is levelheaded and practical, and he keeps his emotions in check, perhaps too much so. 

Ethel Banks

Corie’s mother with a sensitive stomach and a bad back.

Victor Velasco

The man who lives in the attic upstairs. He is a very eccentric man with the taste for adventure and spicy food.

Harry Pepper

A telephone repairman.

Literary Criticism

Neil Simon has managed to squeeze hidden bits of laughter out of the old jokes, just as one can always get a little more toothpaste out of an empty tube and feel more elation in getting it than in the luxurious first squeeze from a brand new tube.

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