‘Laughter’ is back

Neil Simon didn’t have to do much library research to write a play based on the famed writer’s room at Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” in the 1950s.

After all, Simon was one of those writers. So were Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart and Carl Reiner.

“Laughter on the 23rd Floor” is Simon’s tribute to what many people considered the funniest room in America. With Nathan Lane in the Sid Caesar role of Max Prince and Mark Linn-Baker as the head writer, Simon had a reasonably large Broadway hit with the show in 1993.

Simon was used to Broadway success by then; he had already had more than two dozen hits under his belt, including “The Odd Couple” and “The Sunshine Boys.”

Interplayers had its own success with “Laughter on the 23rd Floor” in 1996. Now the Spokane theater is bringing “Laughter” back to the same stage exactly 10 years later with two of the original cast members. William Marlowe will take over the role of Max Prince, and Gary Pierce will reprise his role as Ira, a character based in part on Mel Brooks.

The show has a plot, of sorts, involving some McCarthy-era blacklisting. But mostly it is a rapid-fire barrage of Simon-ized one-liners.

“Essentially, the play is a series of can-you-top-this kaffeeklatsches for Max’s long-suffering writers, periodically interrupted by the welcome, disruptive appearances of the great, alcoholic, pill-popping man himself,” said Frank Rich in his 1993 New York Times review.

Andrew Ware Lewis will direct a cast that also includes Stephanie Brush, Terry Snead, Ron Ford, Chad Herrmann, Chasity Kohlman, Todd Jasmin and Tim Diamond.

Comedies about comedy-writing are more common than you might think. “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” in which a room full of funny writers sat around on couches and created gags for the fictional Alan Brady, was actually Reiner’s take on his Caesar experiences.

The Peter O’Toole comedy “My Favorite Year,” produced by Brooks, also revolved around various backstage disasters at a thinly veiled Sid Caesar show.

Today, two TV shows – a comedy and a drama – are in the pipeline about the behind-the-scenes shenanigans at “Saturday Night Live,” a more modern TV comedy institution.

But even “SNL” can’t boast the kind of writing power gathered in the “Your Show of Shows” room from 1950 to 1954. Those young writers went on to create such cultural touchstones as “Barefoot in the Park,” “The Goodbye Girl,” “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Oh God!” “The Jerk,” “M*A*S*H” and “Tootsie.”

But they may never have laughed as hard as they did on the 23rd floor.