One Man – Three Women – and a Mother’s apartment!
Neil Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers opened on 28 December 1969, at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, New York. It ran for over two years and subsequently was performed throughout the world, including Australia. It has remained one of Neil Simon’s most regularly performed comedies of urban New York life.
This satiric comedy-of-(American-Jewish) manners was initially a response to the ‘sexual liberation’ of the late-1960s, exemplified by the ground-breaking musical Hair, which had opened on Broadway only the year before. Last of the Red Hot Lovers joined other notable productions in 1969, the first year of Richard Nixon’s presidency, that questioned and challenged numerous contemporary conservative values and institutions. This included Leonard Gershe’s Butterflies are Free, and Neil Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers (Marriage), Robert Marasco’s Child’s Play (Roman Catholic education), and Arthur Kopit’s Indians (History and Native-Americans). This rebelliousness was complemented in some of the most outstanding and influential American films of the year, which included John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, and Paul Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.
All these works are celebrating their respective 50th Anniversary in 2019. It is somewhat sobering to think and reflect that many of the issues raised in these works in 1969 are still concerns in 2019. Dated? I think not.
Within Neil Simon’s considerable canon of work, Last of the Red Hot Lovers is the second in a quartet of plays that charts a particular evolution of Neil Simon dramatic concerns, skills, and artistry. From the farcical Plaza Suite (1968) and the satiric romance of Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1969) to the serious dramas of The Gingerbread Lady (1970), and The Prisoner of 2nd Avenue (1971). Collectively, these plays form a quartet with similar themes, characters, situations, and dramatic techniques, including setting the entire action in the same room but with three different stories (Plaza Suite and Last of the Red Hot Lovers). There is a growing sense of middle-age and middle-class fear, isolation and complete ‘bafflement of the individual’. This ‘bafflement’ with the modern world is also reflected in the film The Out of Towners (1970), one of Neil Simon’s best film works.
What gives these plays (and screenplay) an added depth is the poignancy of the humour. Clive Barnes, the influential New York Times theatre critic, noted the shift in Neil Simon’s humour in his review of the original production – “He is as witty as ever…but he is now controlling that special verbal razzle-dazzle that has at times seemed mechanically chill… There is the dimension of humanity to its humour so that you can love it as well as laugh at it.” (NYT. 29 December 1969).
Whilst Last of the Red Hot Lovers deals with a middle-age crisis of confidence the play also deals with more universal issues such as ‘broken dreams’. From today’s perspective, the play could be regarded as relatively conservative. It challenges the now accepted convention of ‘do your own thing’ on a moral and ethical basis. As the characters express, it makes one also question whether or not one is ‘decent’.
Are you? Are you ‘decent’? Who else in your life would you call ‘decent’? Or do you think that mankind is basically selfish and ‘indecent’? What can you do if essentially you are a ‘romantic’ and believe in the best of people rather than the worse? How do you cope with modern ethics that proclaims ‘do your own thing’ and be ‘honest’ to yourself when invariably that involves hurting other people?
This is what makes Last of the Red Hot Lovers still so relevant and pertinent as these issues are still part of living in so-called ‘modern times’ and can be baffling. What makes the play special and very much exemplifies the best of Neil Simon is that he doesn’t judge his characters. These are not ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people but individuals with whom we can empathize as they struggle with a world that seems to demand behaviour that doesn’t sit comfortably with them, particularly in regards to sex.
Like most of Neil Simon’s work, Last of the Red Hot Lovers the characters are wonderful for actors to play. The original (and subsequent productions) invariably have been performed by one male actor and three female actors. The original cast was James Coco (Barney), Linda Lavin (Elaine), Marcia Rodd (Bobbi), and Doris Roberts (Jeanette). The great American caricature artist, Al Hershfield, did one of his famous theatrical portraits of the original cast. Other actors who have performed in this play include Dom DeLuise, Sid Caesar, Alan Arkin (Barney), Rita Moreno, Sally Kellerman (Elaine), Paula Prentis (Bobbi) and Renee Talor (Jeanette). The Australian cast included Harry H. Corbett (Barney), Lelia Blake (Elaine), Anne Lucas (Bobbi), and Betty Lucas (Jeanette), and was directed by Alfred Sandor.
The idea, however, of having all three female characters performed by the same actress was initially inspired by a highly successful 2005/06 Chinese production featuring husband and wife team Xu Zheng (Barney) and Tao Hong (Elaine, Bobbi, Jeanette).
This production of Last of the Red Hot Lovers by STARC PRODUCTIONS complements and continues our ever-evolving ‘aesthetic’ of 2-hander plays in which the acting has precedence over design and concept: ‘STARC by name – ‘Stark’ by Nature’. Each of these four productions – Gardner McKay’s Toyer, Jim Cartwright’s Two, Suzie Miller’s Reasonable Doubt, and now Neil Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers – whilst maintaining our essential dramatic ‘aesthetic’, nonetheless, are widely different in ‘style’.
What is ‘Style’? Michel St. Denis defined ‘style’ as the ‘dramatic reality’ or ‘dramatic truth’ of each individual play – even though written by the same playwright. The world of Last of the Red Hot Lovers may have certain similarities with other plays by Neil Simon, but it is remarkable different – even the three Acts are different, even though set in the same place.
These are the artistic challenges for STARC PRODUCTIONS, challenging our talent and skills against different ‘styles’ within one ‘aesthetic’. Furthermore, it complements and continues STARC PRODUCTIONS artistic mission – Quality Entertainment at Affordable Prices.
We are determined to establish another full-time professional theatre company in Adelaide. It’s Time! The talent and skills are here – but not always the opportunity. It’s Time!
Tony Knight
One of the most popular Australian ‘melodramas’ in the first decades of the 20th Century was The Squatter’s Daughter (1907) by Bert Baily and Edward Duggan. The story essentially involves a dramatic love-triangle between two male rivals and the feisty heroine – Violet, the ‘Squatter’s Daughter’. Partly why this film is in my ‘Top Australian films’ is because it exemplifies the creation of a particular type of Australian female persona – the Aussie ‘shelia’.
and sometimes not – she was seen as the ideal companion to the idealized romantic persona of the contemporary Australian male. These characteristics are also found in Sybylla Mervyn in Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career (1901), who to a certain extent prefigures Violet in The Squatter’s Daughter (1907), and many others to follow – such as Barbara in Lawson Harris’ A Daughter of Australia (1922).
It is, however, Ken G. Hall’s 1932 film version that perhaps gives the best glimpse of how thrilling contemporary Australain audiences found The Squatter’s Daughter. Hall’s film, however, although based on the original play, is considerably different. The characters have been renamed – Violet is now Joan – and certain characters and situations completely removed. For example, the sub-plot in the original play involving the bushranger Ben Hall has gone; its place is a sub-plot involving racism.
‘for attempting to tread on the cabbage tree’. When this came before the authorities Davis changed his story, stating that he would have kicked them ‘if they were not women’. This incident was reported in the Sydney Monitor (1 January 1841) and was also dramatized for the Sydney stage by Henry Charles O’Flaherty, in a number of sketches – Thespis in Austalia: or The Stage in Danger – in which O’Flaherty appeared as ‘Knight of the Fiddle, and Champion of the fair Eliza’, stroking ‘the place where his beard should be’ and claiming that he received a black-eye in the incident. This was followed by a poem The Battle of the Cabbage Tree, which was a satiric parody of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. It is possible that these dramatic pieces were part of O’Flaherty’s wooing of Eliza Winstanley as they were married the following month on 6 February 1841. (Australian Plays for the Colonies 1834-1899. Ed. Richard Fotheringham. University of Queensland Press. 2006. 49-50).
Lieutenant Watkin Tench (1753-1833) was a Marine officer with the ‘First Fleet’ and provided one of the few eye-witness accounts of this production of The Recruiting Officer. Tench wrote, ‘That every opportunity of escape from the dreariness and dejection of our situation should be eagerly embraced will not be wondered at’ (Trench – A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson in New South Wales (1793). 25. Tench’s comment reflects the genuine concern and fragile position that faced the ‘First Fleeters’ in establishing the colony. There were only copies of two English plays that accompanied the First Fleet – George Farquhar’s popular satiric comedy The Recruiting Officer (1706) and the sentimental The Tragedy of Jane Shore (1714) by Poet Laureate Nicholas Rowe (1674-1718). Considering the difficulties, the ‘dreariness and dejection’ felt by Tench and one can assume by many others, Governor Arthur Phillip wisely chose Farquhar’s comedy to honour King George III’s birthday.
It is a ‘war play’ dealing with the character of Philoctetes and the ownership of a master weapon – Heracles’ Bow and Arrows – that is needed to end the Trojan War. At the time when Sophocles wrote Philoctetes and it was first performed Athens was entering the final years of the decades long and exhausting Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE). Whilst achieving a number of military successes and the suppression of a couple of rebellions, nonetheless, Athens and the so-called Athenian League were also facing considerable international problems and defeats, particularly by the Persians as well as the ever increasing power of Carthage and the Carthaginians. Philoctetes may be considered a ‘war play’ but it is also a moral and ethical drama involving ‘keeping the peace’. Furthermore, it shows how in times of war a problematic person of value may be discarded and abandoned for the sake of personal ambition in the guise of action for the ‘greater good’. This hypocritical lie and deceit is exposed and denounced – but only after a long period of time, which is a lesson in itself – and only by someone who has the ethical and moral courage to stand up to the force of the majority.
are a couple of these plays that hold a significant place in Australian theatre history. 
This includes Euripides’ Medea (431 BCE) and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (429 BCE). Medea was a big international success for Australian actors Dame Judith Anderson and Zoe Caldwell; Oedipus Rex was directed by Tyrone Guthrie for Sydney’s Old Tote Theatre Company in the 1960s and was a landmark production not only for Guthrie, but also for the fledgling Old Tote Theatre Company.
This article on Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserv’d is a continuation of the series devoted to ‘neglected’ plays.
I first was introduced to Venice Preserv’d whilst a young directing student at The Drama Centre, London. I was assigned the play by Christopher Fettes to work with a student designer from the Motley Design Course, under the auspices and guidance of Glen Byam Shaw (1904-1986) and Margaret (‘Percy’) Harris (1904-2000) no less. Amazing when I think back on it. Furthermore, it was through working on Venice Preserv’d with the students and teachers at the Motley Design Course that I discovered the work of Edward Gordon Craig who had done numerous stage design concepts for the play. Looking at more modern stage designs for Venice Preserv’d it is interesting noticing Craig’s great influence.
Set in Venice in the late 17th Century Venice Preserv’d is a play about love, death, friendship and betrayal. It is a highly political play involving intrigue, rebellion, corruption and deceit, encapsulated by its subtitle – Venice Preserv’d, or A Plot Discovered. Whilst possible inspired by the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, nonetheless, at the time it was first produced in 1685 it was seen as an attack on the despised royalist government of the recently deceased Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (1621-83). The elderly, scurrilous and decadent Venetian Senator, Antonio, was regarded as a satiric portrait of Shaftesbury. Antonio’s scenes with the courtesan Aquiliana, with his constant referring to his ‘Nicky-Nacky’, whilst hilariously funny also caused controversy, especially considering that ‘Nicky Nacky’ was contemporary slang for a woman’s genitalia. Furthermore, a century later, in 1795, performances of Venice Preserv’d at Richard Brinsely Sheridan‘s Drury Lane Theatre, featuring John Philip Kemble and Sarah Siddons, were involved in notorious ‘theatre riots’ and other disturbances in the wake of the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. The play was seen as ‘disgraceful to public morals, and so inimical to order and government’. The play continued to provoke strong reactions – an American production was banned in 1798, and there were further public demonstrations when the play was revived in 1809 and again in 1848, the year of numerous riots and rebellions throughout Europe.
For centuries Venice Preserv’d held equal status with the most popular and esteemed plays by Shakespeare. Unfortunately, Thomas Otway (1652-85) did not benefit from the success of his play, nor of his other success The Orphan (1680). Otway fell in love with Elizabeth Barry (1658-1713), for whom he wrote most of his main female characters, 
including Belvidera. Mrs Barry, however, did not return his love, preferring the advantageous attention of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647-80). Tragically, Thomas Otway died in abject poverty. There is an apocryphal story about his death first noted by the actor Theophilus Cibber (son of Colley Cibber) in his Lives of the Poets. The destitute and starving Otway was begging near Tower Hill. When he received a guinea from a passing stranger he rushed to the nearest baker, and due to his haste in eating choked on his first bite and died.
In the 18th Century the play was so popular that audience members knew respective speeches by heart, just like today some of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches are known (e.g. ‘To be or not to be”). James Quin (1693-1766), David Garrick (1717-79) and later John Philip Kemble (1757-1823) respectively played Jaffier for many years. Susanna Maria Cibber (1714-76) and Sarah Siddons (1755-1823) scored big hits playing Belvidera. In many ways Sarah Siddons‘ Belvidera became the centre of the play and a major reason for its continued popularity. 
Sarah Siddon’s Belvidera took on full responsibility for the fates of Jaffier and Pierre. How Sarah Siddon’s performed the final scene in which Belvidera goes mad and dies was recorded in 1808 – ‘her ravings, wild, terrible, desperate, were rendered more awful and impressive by the strong exertions in which her mind struggled from time to time to recover its balance and the evanescent glimpse of reason which glimmered doubtfully through the darkness of the soul’. When Sarah Siddon’s Belvidera died, ‘the terrible agonies of her death closed a representation of suffering nature almost too real and too dreadful to be borne’.
In the 19th Century Eliza O’Neill (1791-1872) and Fanny Kemble (1809-1893) respectively scored considerable success as Belvidera. Audiences rose to their feet and cheered Eliza O’Neill’s Belvidera’s death scene. Fanny Kemble wrote that she that she was so overwhelmed by Belvidera that she had to be stopped from rushing screaming from the theatre (bit O.T.T. maybe). Edmund Kean (1787-1833) and Sir Henry Irving (1838-1905) were also notable Jaffier’s in respective productions of Venice Preserv’d.
