"Constant pleasure," said Voltaire, "is no pleasure." The geyser of gag lines in Neil Simon's latest spurt, California Suite, is virtually incessant…. Occasionally I heard a spot of dialogue which struck me as particularly bright but, when I left the theatre, I could not remember the stuff…. There is hardly any character or psychology … not immediately recognizable, and [virtually] no complexity of situation…. The scenes are sustained by jocular repartee rather than living speech. If we were to take this show seriously—if anyone can—I would be obliged to say that the attitude toward the personages involved is not only shallow and vulgar but basically callous. There is moreover an element of smug hypocrisy in the compost, for in each instance we are assured that everybody really loves everybody and there are no hard feelings. Fun is fun, so everyone, including the author, is forgiven.
If there are those who would maintain that I am being priggish about all this because I fail to acknowledge the grain of "truth to life" in these sketches, I can only reply that if such is the fact, my most bilious suspicions about the state of our civilization would have been confirmed. And they are not comic! (p. 30)
Harold Clurman, in The Nation (copyright 1976 by the Nation Associates, Inc.), July 3, 1976.
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