I spent a good part of REHAB listing to audiobooks. This collection of Neil Simon plays was a little different. The cast of the L.A. Theatre Works present 10 of Neil Simon’s best known plays. My favorites are Barefoot in the Park , Plaza Suite and Brighton Beach Memoirs. If you’re a Neil Simon fan, this wonderful set is a must-listen-to experience. At one time, Neil Simon was the top comedy writer on Broadway. These comedic plays show you why he was so popular.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Barefoot in the Park
Newlyweds move into a new apartment with no furniture, the wrong paint, leaking skylight and wacky neighbors! A classic comedy! Performed by: Norman Aronovic, Laura Linney, J. Fred Shiffman, Judy Simmons and Eric Stoltz.
The Odd Couple
Two legendarily mismatched roommates bring down the house in this classic comedy by America’s most successful playwright. Performed by: Dan Castellaneta, Stanley DeSantis, Steven Hack, Jamie Hanes, Nathan Lane, David Paymer, Linda Purl and Yeardley Smith.
Plaza Suite
Neil Simon’s hilarious comedy follows three brief encounters in the same suite at the famed Plaza Hotel in New York City. Performed by: Edward Asner, Michelle Costa, Richard Dreyfuss, Hector Elizondo, Amy Irving, Marsha Mason, Alfred Molina, Kerry Shale, Joe Spano and JoBeth Williams.
The Prisoner of Second Avenue
Fast-moving dialog with nonstop Simon quips and jokes performed extremely well by two fine actors: who could ask for more? Performed by: Annie Abbott, Lorin Dreyfuss, Richard Dreyfuss, Betty Garrett, Sharon Madden and Marsha Mason.
California Suite
A four part comedy confection as only Neil Simon can write it! Four couples separately inhabit the same Beverly Hills hotel suite, bringing along their problems, anxieties, and comical marital dilemmas. Performed by: Dennis Boutsikaris, Bruce Davison, Marsha Mason and Amy Pietz.
Chapter Two
Comedy and pathos mingle brilliantly in Neil Simon’s portrait of a widowed novelist who fears he’ll never love again. Performed by: David Dukes, Sharon Gless, Gates McFadden and Grant Shaud.
Brighton Beach Memoirs
In Neil Simon’s first installment of his darkly funny semiautobiographical Eugene Trilogy, we meet his family in 1930’s Brooklyn. Performed by: Max Casella, Peter Michael Goetz, Valerie Harper, Alexana Lambros, Anna Sophie Loewenberg, Jonathan Silverman and Joyce Van Patten.
Biloxi Blues
The second hilarious installment of Neil Simon’s autobiographical trilogy follows a naïve Eugene Jerome through boot camp. Performed by: Justine Bateman, Rob Benedict, Joshua Biton, John Cabrera, Matthew Patrick Davis, Steve Rankin, Josh Radnor, Russell Soder and Darby Stanchfield.
Broadway Bound
In the final installment of Neil Simon’s trilogy, Eugene and his brother Stanley pair up to break into the world of comedy writing. Performed by: Caroline Aaron, Dan Castellaneta, Kyle Colerider-Krugh, James Gleason, Alan Mandell, Jonathan Silverman, JoBeth Williams and Scott Wolf.
Lost in Yonkers
Set in Yonkers, New York in 1942, two boys, aged 13 and 16, must spend one year with their austere and demanding grandmother. Performed by: Barbara Bain, Gia Carides, Dan Castellaneta, Ben Diskin, Arye Gross, Roxanne Hart and Kenneth Schmidt.
REHAB is the perfect place to listen to audiobooks. I’ll be reviewing the entertaining Simon Brett dramatizations starring Bill Nighy as Charles Paris in a few days. But right now I’m listening to the Black Mask Stories. This first volume features “Come and Get It” by Erle Stanley Gardner, “Arson Plus” by Dashiell Hammett, “Fall Guy” by George Harmon Coxe, “Doors in the Dark” by Frederick Nebel, and “Luck” by Lester Dent. The narrators are first-rate. The stories show why Black Mask is legendary. Six hours of entertainment on six CDs at this price is a bargain! Highly recommended! 
Sun Midnight Sun features some of Sara Watkins best work. My favorite songs are “When It Pleases You,” “Be There,” and “Take Up Your Spade.” If you’re in the mood for a blue-grass, country-folk, or borderline rock song this is the place to find them. I admire Sara Watkins’ range of material. No two songs are alike. GRADE: B+
Living in the 21st Century presents plenty of challenges. Arlie Russell Hochschild’s new book explores some of the trends in our society like Love Coaches. Yes, finding the Right Person takes plenty of time and energy. However, a Love Coach (for a fee) will help with that search and find that Ms. or Mr. Right. Or maybe you don’t want a soulmate, you just want a child. Arlie Russsell Hochschild shows how to buy an egg online together with high-grade sperm of your choice (maybe from a Nobel Prize winner) and arrange for a surrogate in India to carry the child for you (of course, all of this costs mucho dinero). You just have to show up in India nine months from now to pick up the child of your dreams. I found The Outsourced Self fascinating and disturbing. GRADE: B
Michael J. Sandel teaches the very popular course, JUSTICE, at Harvard University. Every semester about 800 students pile into the large lecture hall to hear Sandel’s thought’s about how to make moral decisions. What Money Can’t Buy is an extension of Sandel’s thoughts of moral limits on behavior. Sandel points out some things are not for sale. For example, friendship. Or love. Yes, you can buy sex, but you can’t buy love. Sandel provides examples like Wal-Mart buying insurance on their employees (and collecting when they die). Moral or not? A woman has set up a trust that will pay drug-addicted women $300 to be sterilized so they don’t give birth to drug-addicted children. Moral or not? Sandel gives the reader plenty to think about in What Money Can’t Buy. GRADE: A
Summertime is the time to read Big Fat Books and at 784 pages, George F. Kennan certainly qualifies. George Kennan served in the State Department as an expert on the Soviet Union and was the architect of the “containment” strategy. It took decades, but Kennan’s containment strategy avoided a nuclear war and did ultimately bring down the Soviet Union. John Lewis Gaddis presents a complete picture of Kennan’s life from his early life in Wisconsin to Kennan’s later years at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. If you’re interested in one of the most important diplomats in American history, George F. Kennan is a magisterial biography: it won the National Book Critics Circle Best Biography Award. GRADE: A 
About a month ago, I reviewed Adam Kirsh’s excellent Why Trilling Matters