TEHRAN-The 1971 comedy drama play “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” written by Neil Simon, will be staged at the Da Theater Hall in Tehran from April 24.

Amir Masoud Rajabi has directed the play and performs in it along with Mehdi Samimi, Sara Zoghi, Mohammad Moradi, and Samaneh Sadeghi, ILNA reported.

Neil Simon’s gut-busting comedy about a Manhattan executive’s nervous breakdown and subsequent recovery is a laugh-a-minute look at middle age and modern life.

The story revolves around the escalating problems of a middle-aged couple living on Second Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City.

Mel Edison is a middle-class advertising account executive and he is having a very bad time. His employer is on the verge of bankruptcy and as a result Mel loses his job after 22 years of faithful service. Now, he has to cope with being unemployed at middle age during an economic recession. 

The action occurs during an intense summer heat wave and a prolonged garbage strike, which exacerbates Edison's plight as he and his wife Edna deal with noisy and argumentative neighbors, loud sounds emanating from Manhattan streets up to their apartment. Mel’s 14th floor apartment is cracking and he can’t sleep because the air conditioning is faulty.

When Mel loses his job and gets robbed in the same week, he loses his ability to cope and becomes a prisoner in his Second Avenue apartment, pacing the walls in his pajamas and listening to talk back radio for hours on end. He believes that there is a conspiracy afoot, “The deterioration of the spirit of Man. Man undermining himself, causing a self-willed, self-imposed, self-evident self-destruction!”. 

Mel can't find a job, so Edna goes back to work. Mel eventually suffers a nervous breakdown, and it is up to the loving care of his brother Harry, his sisters, and, mostly, Edna, to try to restore him to a new reality.

Written over 50 years ago, Neil Simon’s play still resonates strongly today. In “The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” Simon's comedy turns darker as he explores the devastating effect that city life can have on a middle-aged couple. 

In the early 1970s, when the play takes place, New York City was beset by financial problems, high crime, and strikes that made daily life often inconvenient and sometimes dangerous.

Neil Simon (1927-2018) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and author. He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly film adaptations of his plays. He received three Tony Awards and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for four Academy Awards and four Primetime Emmy Awards. He was awarded a Special Tony Award in 1975, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1991, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1995, and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2006.

One of the most popular of 20th-century American dramatists, Neil Simon is known for his comedies that often examine the tensions that can arise among family members or between men and women living in New York.

“The Prisoner of Second Avenue” will remain on stage till May 5. The Theater Hall is located at No. 5, the first dead-end, Khark Street, Enqelab Street.

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