To say that I am at a loss for words is merely to put a cliche where my heart should be.

But I truly am at a loss for words. I probably admire Neil Simon more than most of my colleagues. He is a major playwright, a comedian who survives fashion through the honesty of his comic agony.

But here I am at a loss for words. Fools … is simply terrible. I am not only at a loss for words, I am even at a loss for a cliche. Unfortunately, Simon is here not at a loss for either.

It is a one-joke play. And Simon tells the same joke over and over—and much moreover—again. It is a Russian village. In the Ukraine. Scarcely Russia, but near enough. The village is cursed, it is cursed with stupidity.

Everyone—except a schoolmaster who unexpectedly arrives to give...