Neil Simon

Fiesta Dinner Theatre, the oldest surviving dinner theater in the San Diego area, will close its doors after the Jan. 10 performance of "Angel on My Shoulder." Joe and Lois Stevens, owners of the Fiesta, expressed "great sadness" in their announcement. Ironically, the closing will coincide with the establishment's 10th anniversary. Joe Stevens said that business has been "spotty" this year, but he insisted that ticket sales alone were not to blame for the decision.

'50/50" was the first feature script I ever wrote. The reason? When it came to writing, there was nothing exceptional about any of my ideas. I'd always aspired to write movies like the very ones that inspired me: "The Apartment," "Harry and Tonto," "Harold and Maude. " Comedies that are not only funny, they're tragic and they're human. But those movies are experiential meditations, and when I was in my early 20s, the only thing I knew to write about was what it's like to be single, horny and terrified of women.

'50/50" was the first feature script I ever wrote. The reason? When it came to writing, there was nothing exceptional about any of my ideas. I'd always aspired to write movies like the very ones that inspired me: "The Apartment," "Harry and Tonto," "Harold and Maude. " Comedies that are not only funny, they're tragic and they're human. But those movies are experiential meditations, and when I was in my early 20s, the only thing I knew to write about was what it's like to be single, horny and terrified of women.

"I am one of the last of my kind," says etiquette columnist Andrew Carlson (David Hornsby) at the very top of "How to Be a Gentleman," a new series from CBS, where all comedies are multi-camera comedies, as in days of old, when "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" ruled the air. "I open the door for ladies, but I am not a doorman ... I put out cigarettes, but I am not a cigarette putter-out man. " What Andrew is is a throwback, an etiquette columnist at...

Back in the 1940s, the U.S. Army plucked many young men with big dreams from their hometowns and sent them to faraway boot camps in places such as Biloxi, Miss. One of the young men, a 19-year-old from New York, went on to write some of the best-loved comic plays in the American theater, including one about that boot camp experience. It's a work called "Biloxi Blues," the playwright is Neil Simon and a production of it opens Friday at Citrus College in Glendora.

Neil Simon has a cold, so he's eating onion soup. Does he mind talking while he eats? No. "It takes my mind off the soup." Actually, it takes his mind off plenty of things. His new play, "Rumors," opens at the Old Globe Theatre here on Thursday. He's been working almost around the clock through four weeks of rehearsals, and he is out of energy and ideas both. Better he should do an interview.

Playwright Neil Simon has received a kidney donated by his friend and publicist Bill Evans, a representative of the publicist said Wednesday. He said the two men underwent kidney transplant surgery on Tuesday afternoon at a New York hospital. Simon, 76, author of more than 30 plays, has been undergoing kidney dialysis treatment three times a week for the last 18 months. "Both of them are doing well," said Evans representative Jim Randolph.

Rumor has it that there are people who don't laugh during Neil Simon plays. And when they're found, some scientist will probably get a grant to study them. For everyone else, for nearly 30 years a ticket to a Simon play has meant a ticket to mirth. "Brighton Beach Memoirs," now playing at the North Coast Repertory Theatre through Aug. 9, is no exception to this rule. It is decidedly more ambitious than Simon's earlier works.

So many famous people owe some portion of their careers, if not their entire careers, to Neil Simon's genius with words that the thank-yous were entirely personal when the 79-year-old legend was presented with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center on Sunday night. Jonathan Silverman, who played Simon as a young man in "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "Broadway Bound," said his association with the writer's work "changed my life. He plucked me from obscurity."

Playwright Neil Simon says tickling the funny bone is a better way to reflect reality than drama. "I don't think about what I'm trying to reflect of the human condition," said Simon, who will be honored on PBS's "American Masters" next Monday. "I've found that comedy is the best way for me to reflect my own feelings. I think comedy can be more realistic than drama. But I do like the mixture of comedy and drama in a play."

Of course there's a big Bollywood-style musical finale (even though it wasn't in the original script). And naturally, there's a boisterous wedding scene, wisecracks about the Kama Sutra, a large dollop of "East-West" conflict and clothes as brilliantly hued as a tropical fruit basket. What else would you expect from a bittersweet domestic drama about multigenerational Indian migrants coping with family life in a northern England town? But if Ayub Khan-Din's play "Rafta, Rafta" fulfills certain cultural expectations, it blithely flouts others.

Marsha Mason starred in the 1978 PBS version of Neil Simon's play "The Good Doctor. " Her leading man got his start on TV playing "Dr. Kildare. " Who is he? Richard Chamberlain.

The ba-dum-bum exchange could have been written by Neil Simon. All that was missing was the rimshot. Two women of a certain age at intermission: First Woman: "The other thing he directed was quite good, this is just boring." Second Woman: "I fell asleep." First Woman: "Ditto," as she tosses her Playbill into the trash. The two walk out into the rainy night. This scene, which took place Saturday night at the Nederlander Theatre, sums up the conventional wisdom regarding why Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs" closed the next day -- after only nine performances.

Say what you will about Neil Simon's penchant for shtick -- he knows how to start a play. "Lost in Yonkers," his 1991 Tony- and Pulitzer-winning show, now running at La Mirada's Theatre for the Performing Arts, opens with two boys sweating in their stiff Sunday best. Jay (Aaron Albert) and Arty (Austyn Myers) wait as their father (Evan Arnold) negotiates in the next room with tyrannical Grandma Kurnitz (Jayne Taini). A loan shark is after Pops. But he's more afraid of his mother. The boys are about to get a life lesson in debt -- financial and emotional -- as they become temporary residents of the Kurnitz household and employees at Grandma's downstairs candy store.

Like the 1972 Elaine May classic that inspired it, the Farrelly Brothers' remake of "The Heartbreak Kid" is the story of a guy who gets married, regrets it and falls in love with another woman while on his honeymoon. That, more or less, is where the similarities end.

So many famous people owe some portion of their careers, if not their entire careers, to Neil Simon's genius with words that the thank-yous were entirely personal when the 79-year-old legend was presented with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center on Sunday night. Jonathan Silverman, who played Simon as a young man in "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "Broadway Bound," said his association with the writer's work "changed my life. He plucked me from obscurity."

A play about a retarded aunt, a father on the skids, an uncle who's a bag man for the mob and a grandmother with all the instincts of a Nazi doesn't sound much like a comedy. But Neil Simon comedies are harder to define these days. This includes Simon's "Lost in Yonkers," broadly described above and seen at a Wednesday preview at the Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood.

Here's the rundown on guests and topics for the weekend's public-affairs programs: Today "Saturday Journal": Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post staff writer; Amy Holmes, Independent Women's Forum, 5 a.m. C-SPAN. "Today": Neil Simon; tax advice for late filers; filmmaker Michael Moore; prom fashions; the New York Auto Show; health-care costs (Part 1 of 2), 5 a.m. (4)(39). "John McLaughlin's One on One": United Nations, 1:30 p.m. (28). "Evans & Novak": Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), 2:30 p.m.

"The Sisters Rosensweig": David Warren's staging of Wendy Wasserstein's 1992 comedy pays homage to what the playwright did best: create roles for women who struggle to balance professional and personal fulfillment. The play could stand a bit of cutting and some of the broader shtick should have been toned down, but the production isn't out to correct dramaturgical faults. It rejoices in the laughs and savors the slightly sentimental emotion.

Even by the screwball standards of Neil Simon comedies, the eye-rolling punch lines of "Fools" rush in where wisecracks fear to tread. Amid its lavishly corny cornucopia of shtick and groaners, a breezy, energetic revival from Ventura's Rubicon Theatre Company mines unexpected sweetness and charm to lighten up the holidays.