Nudniks

By T.E. Kalem

by Neil Simon

How many people ankle up to a bar and ask for a lemonade? Fools is a lemonade play. It has a homey flavor, and it is not altogether unrefreshing, but it lacks the comic belt to command Broadway's current tab of $25 a shot.

Neil Simon has set his latest play in a kind of Anatevka-cum-Brigadoon locale. The town is called Kulyenchikov, and its inhabitants are Russian villagers. In Brigadoon, time stood still except for a day; in Kulyenchikov, minds stand still every minute. The natives are under a "long ago" curse damning them to stupidity.

The town butcher (Joseph Leon) sweeps dirt off his porch into his house. Told to lower her voice, the wife (Mary Louise Wilson) of an eye doctor (Harold Gould) scrunches toward the floor. Occasionally, Simon abandons these hoary vaudeville turns for a flash of absurdist humor. The doctor's daughter (Pamela Reed), adorable as she is dumb, is asked what her favorite color is and replies, "Yellow. . . because it doesn't stick to your fingers so much." Her mother mutters: "I think she's wrong. I think it's blue."

A young schoolteacher (John Rubinstein) comes to Kulyenchikov. Smitten by Reed, he is swept into a kind of "Romeo and Wooliet" romance and lifts the village curse through true love. Rubinstein is an ardent and vastly sympathetic performer, but neither he nor the deft comic ministrations of Director Mike Nichols can salvage this show. For whatever it may mean, Simon's two weakest efforts in 19 plays have a Russian connection, The Good Doctor, a kind of Chekhovian doodle, and now Fools. When next tempted in that direction, he should probably say nyet. --By T.E. Kalem

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