Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Canberra Rep, 22 Feb-9 Mar

 

Neil Simon is a chronicler of a very specific era in American Comedy - his '60s comedies leaned more into the aspirational middle-aged, middle-class that was the bulk of the Broadway audience in that era, of the same ilk as writers like Jean Kerr ("Mary, Mary") and William Gibson ("Two for the Seasaw"). More prolific than either, he kept on writing til the early 2000s across plays, musicals, and movies creating quite a sizable legacy. His 1969 comedy "Last of the Red Hot Lovers" takes on the swinging cultural mores that he'd been witness to (those who have seen the miniseries "Fosse/Verdon" may remember Simon was a witness to a lot of Fosse's infidelities) and the complicated emotions those brought up in an older generation. 

In some ways, it's very much a middle-aged man's view of the era (Simon was 42 when he wrote it), and some of the attitudes of that era do pervade the play (it could be retitled "I'm scared of every woman who isn't my wife" - Simon's later play, "Jake's Women", could be retitled "I'm also scared of some of the women who have been my wife"). But in other ways, it offers a great range of roles for three actresses to get their teeth into as they each visit the apartment owned by Barney Cashman's mother for an afternoon Barney intends to be an intimate, special experience, which turns out to be more revealing of both himself and the women he's invited over than it is the carnal delights he's been hoping for. Each act of this three-act play is a two-hander between the neurotic Cashman and a different woman who each get a lot of time to create distinctive, complex characters.

First up there's Victoria Tyrell Dixon as the tough-talking Elaine, an experienced woman whose bluntness unnerves Barney but who's absolutely able to see through his blather and his self-delusion to realise that he's never going to be able to follow through on what he claims to want. It's very distinctive from the previously more poised roles I've seen her in and it's a delight to see her deadpan disappointment building as the act builds. Stephanie Bailey follows as the impulsive, goofy Bobbi, whose continual patter about her personal dramas reveals a woman whose experiences are wildly at odds with Barney's conventional nature. She also gets to sing a few bits of Bacharach and is thoroughly engaging. Janie Lawson wraps up the show with the moody, depressed Jeanette, who gets laughs from her wordless entrance all the way through (though the script slightly sabotages her by having some very 1969-style-dramatic-therapy where depression can apparently be cured by yelling at someone a lot). Playing against them is David Cannell who anchors the piece as our ironically-titled-red-hot-lover-who-is-really-more-lukewarm-neurotic - we see him get into the cycle of being a slightly more polished seducer (as his Fiona-Leach provided suits get more polished and his preparatory moves get a rhythm to them) and also how the inner Barney is still a conventionally happily married man with an abstract yearning that the afternoons with these women is never going to cure. 

This is very much what you'd expect from a Neil Simon play of the era-  it's gentle, non-threatening theatre with charm and some pretty decent jokes - but it is very much of its era and the main enjoyable quality is the performances of the three different women.