Laughter on the 23rd Floor is a play by Neil Simon

Neil Simon

Neil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that...

.

Inspired by Simon's early career experience as a junior jokesmith (along with his brother Danny

Danny Simon

Danny Simon was an American television writer and comedy teacher. He was also older brother to acclaimed American playwright Neil Simon....

) for Your Show of Shows

Your Show of Shows

Your Show of Shows is a live 90-minute variety show that appeared weekly in the United States on NBC , from February 25, 1950, until June 5, 1954, featuring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca....

, the play focuses on Sid Caesar

Sid Caesar

Isaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar is an Emmy award winning American comic actor and writer known as the leading man on the 1950s television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, and to younger generations as Coach Calhoun in Grease and Grease 2.- Early life :Caesar was born in Yonkers, New York,...

/Jackie Gleason

Jackie Gleason

Jackie Gleason was an American comedian, actor and musician. He was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy style, especially by his character Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, a situation-comedy television series. His most noted film roles were as Minnesota Fats in the drama film The...

-like Max Prince, the star of a weekly comedy-variety show circa 1953, and his staff, including Simon's alter-ego Lucas Brickman, who maintains a running commentary on the writing, fighting, and wacky antics which take place in the writers' room. At the plot's core is Max's ongoing battles with NBC executives who fear his humor is too sophisticated for Middle America.

The characters in the play are based on Neil Simon's co-writers on Your Show Of Shows. Woody Allen

Woody Allen

Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...

 is often misattributed to the Ira Stone character, as the character in the play is a hypochondriac and Allen went on to use that affectation to great effect in his own comedy career. However, in actuality Simon was poking fun at Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...

. The real-life counterparts for each character are:

Lucas Brickman	Neil Simon Neil Simon Neil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that...
Max Prince	Sid Caesar Sid Caesar Isaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar is an Emmy award winning American comic actor and writer known as the leading man on the 1950s television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, and to younger generations as Coach Calhoun in Grease and Grease 2.- Early life :Caesar was born in Yonkers, New York,... /Jackie Gleason Jackie Gleason Jackie Gleason was an American comedian, actor and musician. He was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy style, especially by his character Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, a situation-comedy television series. His most noted film roles were as Minnesota Fats in the drama film The...
Kenny Franks	Larry Gelbart Larry Gelbart Larry Simon Gelbart was an American television writer, playwright, screenwriter and author.-Early life:...
Val Slotsky	Mel Tolkin Mel Tolkin Mel Tolkin, né Shmuel Tolchinsky , was a television comedy writer best known as head writer of the seminal, live TV sketch comedy series Your Show of Shows during the Golden Age of Television. There he presided over a storied staff that at times included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, and...
Brian Doyle	Michael Stewart Michael Stewart (playwright) Michael Stewart was an American playwright and librettist.Born Michael Stuart Rubin in Manhattan, Stewart attended Queens College, and is a graduate of Yale School of Drama with a Master of Fine Arts from 1953. Michael Stewart (August 1, 1924 – September 20, 1987) was an American playwright...
Milt Fields	Carl Reiner Carl Reiner Carl Reiner is an American actor, film director, producer, writer and comedian. He has won nine Emmy Awards and one Grammy Award during this career...
Carol Wyman	Selma Diamond Selma Diamond Selma Diamond was a Canadian-born American comic actress and radio and television writer, and is known for her high-range, raspy voice and her portrayal of Selma Hacker on the first two seasons of the NBC television comedy series Night Court.-Life and career:Diamond was born in Montreal, Quebec,...
Ira Stone	Mel Brooks Mel Brooks Mel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...
Harry Prince	Dave Caesar (Sid's brother)

After twenty-four previews, the Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 production, directed by Jerry Zaks

Jerry Zaks

Jerry Zaks is a German-born American stage and television director, and actor. He won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play and Drama Desk Award for directing The House of Blue Leaves, Lend Me A Tenor, and Six Degrees of Separation and the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and Drama...

, opened on November 22, 1993, at the Richard Rodgers Theatre

Richard Rodgers Theatre

The Richard Rodgers Theatre, is a Broadway theater in New York City, built by Irwin Chanin in 1925. When it was first opened, it was called Chanin's 46th Street Theatre. Chanin almost immediately leased it to the Shuberts, who bought the building outright in 1931 and renamed it the 46th Street...

, where it ran for 320 performances. The opening night cast included Nathan Lane

Nathan Lane

Nathan Lane is an American actor of stage and screen. He is best known for his roles as Mendy in The Lisbon Traviata, Albert in The Birdcage, Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers, Ernie Smuntz in MouseHunt, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to...

, Ron Orbach, Randy Graff

Randy Graff

Randy Graff is an American actress. Graff has been in feature films such as Keys to Tulsa and Rent as well as being in television shows such as NBC's Law & Order a number of times. In addition to film and television, Graff has been in several Broadway shows...

, Mark Linn-Baker

Mark Linn-Baker

Mark Linn-Baker is an American actor and director famous for his role as Larry Appleton on the television sitcom Perfect Strangers.-Early life and career:...

, Bitty Schram

Bitty Schram

Elizabeth Natalie "Bitty" Schram is an American actress, most widely known for having played Sharona Fleming in the television series Monk.-Career:...

, J. K. Simmons

J. K. Simmons

Jonathan Kimble "J. K." Simmons is an American actor. He is best known for his roles on television as Dr. Emil Skoda in NBC's Law & Order , Assistant Police Chief Will Pope in TNT's The Closer, neo-Nazi Vernon Schillinger in the HBO prison drama Oz, on film as J...

, and Lewis J. Stadlen

Lewis J. Stadlen

Lewis J. Stadlen is an American stage and screen character actor.-Career:Born in Brooklyn, New York to voice actor Allen Swift, Stadlen studied acting with Sanford Meisner and Stella Adler...

. Paul Provenza

Paul Provenza

Paul Provenza is an actor, comedian and filmmaker, a self-professed skeptic currently based in Los Angeles.-Early years:...

 was originally cast as Ira Stone, but was fired prior to opening.

A West End

West End theatre

West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

 production headed by Gene Wilder

Gene Wilder

Gene Wilder is an American stage and screen actor, director, screenwriter, and author.Wilder began his career on stage, making his screen debut in the film Bonnie and Clyde in 1967. His first major role was as Leopold Bloom in the 1968 film The Producers...

 opened on October 3, 1996, at the Queen's Theatre

Queen's Theatre

The Queen's Theatre is a West End theatre located in Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. It opened on 8 October 1907 as a twin to the neighbouring Gielgud Theatre which opened ten months earlier. Both theatres were designed by W.G.R...

, where it ran for five months.

Lane repeated his role for the 2001 television movie

Television movie

A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...

 written by Simon and directed by Richard Benjamin

Richard Benjamin

Richard Benjamin is an American actor and film director. He has starred in a number of productions, including Goodbye, Columbus , based on the novella by Philip Roth, and Westworld .-Life and career:...

. The cast included several faces familiar to TV audiences, among them Victor Garber

Victor Garber

Victor Joseph Garber is a Canadian film, stage and television actor and singer. Garber is known for playing Jesus in Godspell, Jack Bristow in the television series Alias, Max in Lend Me a Tenor, and Thomas Andrews in James Cameron's Titanic.-Early life:Born in London, Ontario, Canada, Garber is...

, Peri Gilpin

Peri Gilpin

Peri Gilpin is an American actress known for her role as Roz Doyle in the U.S. television series Frasier from 1993 until 2004. Along with the principal cast, Gilpin won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series in 2000...

, and Dan Castellaneta

Dan Castellaneta

Daniel Louis "Dan" Castellaneta is an American actor, voice actor, comedian, singer and screenwriter. Noted for his long-running role as Homer Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, he voices many other characters on The Simpsons, including Abraham "Grampa" Simpson, Barney Gumble,...

.

In April/ May, 2011, Laughter on the 23rd Floor will receive a newly conceived production in Philadelphia at 1812 Productions. This production will take place in repertory with an original comedy, Our Show of Shows, an homage to Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows

Your Show of Shows

Your Show of Shows is a live 90-minute variety show that appeared weekly in the United States on NBC , from February 25, 1950, until June 5, 1954, featuring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca....

. This will be the first time Laughter on the 23rd Floor has been presented with a companion piece. Neil Simon and Sid Caesar

Sid Caesar

Isaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar is an Emmy award winning American comic actor and writer known as the leading man on the 1950s television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, and to younger generations as Coach Calhoun in Grease and Grease 2.- Early life :Caesar was born in Yonkers, New York,...

 both gave their personal approval for this repertory production, and Eddy Friedfeld, co-author of Sid Caesar's autobiography, Caesar's Hours, is the dramaturg for both shows. Of the companion piece, Our Show of Shows, Sid Caesar wrote, “To the superb cast and crew of 1812 Productions: Thank you for keeping my legacy alive.”

Why the 23rd Floor?

According to Simon, Sid Caesar's writers on the original Your Show of Shows

Your Show of Shows

Your Show of Shows is a live 90-minute variety show that appeared weekly in the United States on NBC , from February 25, 1950, until June 5, 1954, featuring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca....

(including Neil Simon and his older brother Danny Simon

Danny Simon

Danny Simon was an American television writer and comedy teacher. He was also older brother to acclaimed American playwright Neil Simon....

) held their script sessions at various times on the eleventh and the twelfth floors of an NBC-TV office building; Simon added those numbers together to put his fictional cast on the 23rd floor.