Neil Simon's The Good Doctor will be performed Thursday-Saturday, November 3-5 at 8 p.m. with a Sunday matinee, November 6, at 2 p.m. General admission tickets are $8 in advance and $10 at the door. Tickets are available online or from students involved with the production. The audience will be seated on the Temple High Auditorium stage, on four sides of the actors. Audience members should enter the building through the glass lobby on the west side of the main building, next to the band hall.
Though he is never mentioned by name in the script, Russian playwright Anton Chekhov is both the “good doctor” of the title and the writer (played by Andrew Tye) we meet in the opening monologue. The writer’s meditations on his life and work introduce and link a series of vignettes adapted by Simon from Chekhov’s short fiction.
CLICK HERE for the Information Page., which contains the cast list, production staff list, and a listing of the scenes in the show.
An Odd Couple?: Neil Simon and Anton Chekhov. At first they may seem like an unlikely double act. Simon took Broadway by storm in the 1960s and 1970s with bittersweet comedies featuring snappy dialogue, zany antics, and quirky characters coping with the indignities of contemporary life. Many of Simon’s plays have been adapted for film and television, including The Odd Couple. On the other hand, “laugh riot” is not a phrase that the name Anton Chekhov brings to mind.
But, in fact, Simon and Chekhov are not such a very odd couple. Before their “legitimate” successes, both playwrights paid their dues and their bills by churning out humorous sketches for commercial markets. Simon started out in television, contributing (for instance) to 139 episodes of Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” between 1950 and 1954. While in medical school in the 1880s, Chekhov supported his family by publishing an endless series of short stories in weekly comic magazines.
With his background in sketch comedy, Simon was well placed to appreciate the dramatic possibilities of Chekhov’s comic fiction.