Arts Review

Laughter on the 23rd Floor

Austin Playhouse, 3601 S. Congress, 476-0084, www.austinplayhouse.com

Through March 27

Running time: 2 hr.

There are many paths to Funny. You can get there by the high road or the low road, by being big and broad or slyly witty, with withering sarcasm or leering innuendo, by dropping an F-bomb or dropping your pants.

We see a delightful range of these approaches in Laughter on the 23rd Floor, because the characters who inhabit the high-rise locale of the title are in the Funny Business. They have the job of cranking out comedy for a weekly variety program in the early days of television, and playwright Neil Simon shows how each comes to the task of crafting laughs from a different angle.

This is Simon in the vein of Broadway Bound and Brighton Beach Memoirs, nostalgically recalling his formative years – here turning a fond eye on his mid-1950s stint writing for Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour. Among enthusiasts of humor, the writers' rooms of those programs is the stuff of legend, joining together as if at the Round Table (King Arthur's or the Algonquin) the gifted Simon and his equally jokewise brother Danny, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin, and Selma Diamond. Simon bases the characters here on his old colleagues, exaggerating their foibles for comic effect, but never without affection – and obvious affection at that.

But as much as this play is a valentine to the comedic geniuses with whom Simon worked in that golden era, it's a valentine, too, to comedy itself, as calling and as craft. Its characters have funny in their bones, and every event, every act, every observation is an opportunity to crack wise, to make light, to give life a comic spin (or kick in the keister, as the case may be). Simon's trademark one-liners have never felt so organic, since virtually all the characters here are driven to spout such zingers. And because laughs are their livelihood, they're also bound to criticize the comic efficacy of one another's quips. They wrangle over what word would make a comment more comical and who can concoct the silliest name. And each such challenge reveals not only the degree to which these figures comprehend comedy on a fundamental level and can shape it like a potter at his wheel, but also the distinctive comedic sensibilities of the characters – their peculiar paths to Funny.

And one of the chief pleasures of the Austin Playhouse production that Don Toner has directed is watching its actors, whose grasp of comedy mirrors their characters', stick the landing on a punch line or nail a gag while following their own paths to Funny. There's Huck Huckaby, selling the zingers of his character, Milt, with a Borscht Belt lilt. There's Steve Shearer, playing the amiable Russian-born Val with so much of a straight man's restraint that you never see the gag coming before it smacks your funny bone. There's Jason Newman, keeping his Kenny in a perpetual state of understatedness that masks the character's deadly aim with sarcastic remarks – which are made all the funnier by his bone-dry delivery. There's Brian Coughlin as wannabe screenwriter Brian, and Blake Adam Smith as Simon's stand-in for his younger self, Lucas, both easygoing presences who demonstrate how to score heavy laughs with a light touch. And in contrast, there's David Stahl and Jenny Larson, neither of whom is afraid to carry a big schtick; both mine hilarity from larger-than-life characterizations, she with a double-shot of Noo-Yawk attitoode delivered in a nasal voice that pierces like a diamond-tipped drill, he with an overblown case of hypochondria perfectly pitched to the edge of hysteria. Finally, there's David Stokey, who plays Max Prince, the star of the show for whom these writers work and a human typhoon, blowing into the writers' room, making random demands, and leaving chaos in his wake. It's a monumental role, and Stokey just steps into it and expands himself to fill it, creating a Max who's unself-consciously loud and brash and impetuous but compelling and inspiring, too. Perhaps most impressively, Stokey shows us Max's haunted side; there's a spot just behind his eyes where it's as if a seed of fear has taken root and can't be dislodged. It adds an unexpected depth to this emperor of comedy, and reminds us that for many comics, the path to Funny goes through pain. Stokey's gutsy performance provides the emotional anchor for this enjoyable comedy about comedy.