As The Prisoner of Second Avenue begins to unfold, it's clear that Mel Edison … is your prototypical middle-class New Yorker. A 46-year-old account executive who has lived six years in his 14th floor apartment …, he is beset by all the existential woes of the urban condition….
Mel Edison, in brief, is quite literally losing his sanity; and in establishing this condition, Neil Simon has done his best work to date…. If it is not a wholly successful play, it is a wholly admirable one.
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Read the rest of this Criticism with our Simon, (Marvin) Neil 1927–: Critical Essay by Clifford A. Ridley Access Pass.
