Laughter On The 23rd Floor presented by Keegan Theatre at Keegan Theatre

Laughter On The 23rd Floor

Keegan Theatre
1742 Church Street, NW Washington

Inspired by the playwright’s youthful experience as a staff writer on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows,” this Neil Simon favorite depicts the harried writing staff as they frantically scramble to top each other with gags while competing for the attention of star madman Max Prince. Filled with nostalgia, classic Catskills humor, and colorful characters, Laughter on the 23rd Floor is bound to have you..well…laughing.

Presented by Keegan Theatre

Thru - Feb 18, 2012

Show Type: Comedy

Running Time: 2 hrs, 20 minutes with 1 intermission

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Laughter On The 23rd Floor Reviews

Average Rating based on 7 reviews

Highly Recommended
Recommended
Somewhat Recommended
Not Recommended

Washington Post - Highly Recommended

"... This raucous yet intimate staging of “Laughter on the 23rd Floor,” at Church Street Theater through Feb. 18, is, with few exceptions under Colin Smith’s direction, well cast and performed with the kind of clockwork timing that a Simon script requires."

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- Jane Horwitz

Washington Examiner - Recommended

"...In the current Keegan Theatre production of "Laughter," Ray Ficca is well cast as the larger-than-life, eccentric Prince, who mimics Marlon Brando and does battle with the NBC executives who are uneasy about his unconventional comedy. The writers are like Max's children, who worry about Max as he ends each evening with pills and four jiggers of scotch."

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- Barbara Mackay

Washington City Paper - Recommended

"... Though they’ve only been handed one comic attribute apiece, the others are fine— John Loughney spouting exposition as Simon’s stand-in, Michael Innocenti blustering as a Mel Brooksian hypochondriac, and Bradley Foster Smith as a Russian-accented head writer making the strongest impressions—but even with Colin Smith staging things at a gallop, this stable of writers is laboring at a disadvantage in an evening so freighted with idolatry that it can’t help sagging when Prince isn’t on stage. He rails and cajoles—and in the play’s funniest moment does a nifty impression of Caesar doing Brando doing Marc Antony doing in Julius Caesar—but never gets a chance to turn an evening of scattered comic bits into something more substantial, the way Simon’s aging vaudevillians do in The Sunshine Boys."

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- Bob Mondello

Washingtonian - Recommended

"... Young writer Neil Simon got a very lucky break when he and his brother Danny were discovered by comic genius Sid Caesar. They were writing comedy scripts for a summer resort when Caesar saw their show and hired the Simons to join the writing team on Your Show of Shows in the early ’50s. Decades before Saturday Night Live, Caesar and company were inventing political sketch comedy. The writers faced network pressures to dumb down the show, as well as a growing right-wing political climate fueled by Senator Joe McCarthy. Laughter on the 23rd Floor is based on Simon’s 30 Rock–esque experiences on the show."

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- Leslie Milk

ShowBizRadio - Highly Recommended

"... Keegan Theatre’s take on this Neil Simon piece is a gratifying theatre experience. It will undoubtedly make you laugh–and also think a little, too. The production has that certain “I don’t know what” about it that one always hopes to have at the theatre. It is particularly interesting that Keegan has put it on in the nation’s capital, where we have our own brand of network execs to deal with–but that’s a whole different kind of theatre."

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- Racheal Murray

MD Theatre Guide - Recommended

"... I’ve seen musicals at Keegan Theatre before and enjoyed them, but this was my first time seeing a play, and I am glad to say that it was no different – another fine production. Neil Simon’s Laughter on the 23rd Floor is about an office full of harried writers in charge of producing a satirical television show in 1953 – a period when the government influenced the people with xenophobic fears and the threat of censorship, and when Neil Simon himself and his brother Danny wrote for Sid Caesar’s The Show Shows. Laughter on the 23rd Floor provides a great parallel to events in today’s society and political climate."

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- Don Michael Mendoza

DCTheatreScene - Highly Recommended

You want funny? Keegan Theatre has funny. Laughter on the 23rd Floor. They killed it, nailed it, knocked it out of the park. The laughs at the Keegan come out faster than the burgers from the grill at Hamburger Haven in the clutches of a midnight munchies run.

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- Larry Bangs

Laughter On The 23rd Floor presented by Keegan Theatre at Keegan Theatre