Barefoot in the Park

By Neil Simon

Neil Simon was born in the Bronx in 1927 and grew up in Washington Heights at the Northern Tip of Manhattan. He attended the University of New York and Denver before joining the Army and commencing his writing career working for the Army camp newspaper.

After being discharged from the army he and his brother Danny, began writing comedy revues and eventually found their way into radio, then television where he worked alongside the likes of Woody Allen and Mel Brooks. He soon moved onto the stage and quickly established himself as one of America's most successful playwrights. Simon has won many awards in his time including an Emmy award for television writing, three Tony Awards for Best Play, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1994 for ‘Lost in Yonkers’ as well as a Golden Globe in 1978 for his screenplay ‘The Goodbye Girls’.

Plays include ‘Come Blow Your Horn’, ‘The Odd Couple’, ‘Sweet Charity’, ‘Plaza Suite’, ‘Last of The Red Hot Lovers’, ‘Prisoner of Second Avenue’, ‘California Suite’ and ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’.

THE PLAY

It’s winter in New York and newly weds Paul and Corrie find they have only their love to keep them warm! The heating in their tiny top-floor apartment doesn’t work, there’s a hole in the sky-light where the snow comes in and the neighbours are all mad—especially the Hungarian in the attic who drags them off to Staten Island for uzu and poofa-pie. Worse still, Corrie loves this eccentric life-style while rising young attorney (a.k.a “stuffed shirt”) Paul hate sit.

Things come to a head when Corrie threatens divorce unless Paul agrees to walk “barefoot in the park” – snow or no snow.

CAST & CREW

CAST

Paul – Ian Creese
Corrie – Charlotte Lamb
Mother – Jenny Haynes
Victor – John Dobing
Man – David Nightingale
Delivery Man – Bob Horn

BEHIND THE SCENES