Last of the Red Hot Lovers by Neil Simon

First published: 1970

First produced: 1969, at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, New York City

Type of plot: Comedy

Time of work: 1969-1970

Locale: An apartment in New York City’s East Thirties

Principal Characters:

• Barney Cashman, the owner of a seafood restaurant
• Elaine Navazio, one of his customers
• Bobbi Michele, an unemployed entertainer
• Jeanette Fisher, an old family friend

The Play

Last of the Red Hot Lovers begins on a bright December afternoon as Barney Cashman, a forty-seven-year-old man who is conservatively dressed and carries an attache case, rings the doorbell and then uses his key to enter what turns out to be his mother’s small apartment. He carefully hangs his overcoat in the closet, puts his rubbers on a piece of newspaper, closes the drapes, and lights the lamps. Next, he removes a bottle of scotch and two tumblers from his attache case, setting them on the table. Finally, he takes out a bottle of aftershave lotion and applies it lavishly to his face and hands, smelling his fingers when he has finished.

Next Barney moves the coffee table and opens the convertible bed. Then, somewhat nervously, he reverses his action, taking a drink as he telephones the cashier at his restaurant to say that he will not be in until later because he is Christmas shopping at Bloomingdale’s. At this point, Barney speaks aloud, saying, “What the hell am I doing here?” and goes toward the closet as if to leave. He is stopped, however, by the doorbell announcing the arrival of Elaine Navazio.

Described by the playwright as “a somewhat attractive woman in her late thirties, having an air of desperation about her,” Elaine has accepted an invitation from Barney, anticipating a routine sexual encounter. He, however, has something quite different in mind. He tries to explain to her that he considers his life to have been completely uneventful—just “nice”—and so he is seeking a romantic affair, the first in his twenty-three years of marriage. There is much comedy as Elaine becomes desperate for a cigarette—Barney is a nonsmoker—and also over his attempts to “communicate” with her while she continues to remind him that they are wasting precious time, for Barney’s mother is due to return at five o’clock. Clearly, these two people are completely incompatible, and the act ends with a verbal battle. Barney tries in vain to explain his desire to “live a little” before he dies, but Elaine replies, “no one gives a good crap about you dying because a lot of people have discovered it ahead of you. We’re all dying, Mr. Cashman. As a matter of fact, I myself passed away about six months ago.”

As the act ends, Barney vows aloud never to repeat this experience, but the next act, which takes place eight months later, finds Barney again in his mother’s apartment, awaiting Bobbi Michele. Determined not to repeat his failure, Barney now has two bottles, scotch and vodka, and three packs of cigarettes. He again closes the blinds and telephones the restaurant, this time saying that he is at the dentist’s office. After spraying his fingers to be sure there is no fishy odor remaining from his restaurant work, he opens the door to a pretty girl of about twenty-seven.

Barney had met Bobbi in the park the day before and lent her, a complete stranger, twenty dollars to hire an accompanist for an audition; she has come to repay him. The comic tone is set when he reluctantly agrees to accept the money, only to have her say that he may have to wait until she either gets a show in New York or does a series of concerts in New Zealand.

Barney is fascinated with Bobbi’s bizarre stories about her many sexual adventures with such characters as the cabdriver who wanted to “make it with her” under the Manhattan Bridge, an unknown Mexican who beat her in a motel room in Los Angeles, a man who had had his teeth sharpened to ensure her obedience to his weird requests. Finally, she telephones the lesbian Nazi with whom she is currently living and talks “made-up German,” all the while paying almost no attention to Barney. Then she asks him whether he objects to her smoking, but his three-brand selection is not what she has in mind. She has “sticks” from a Beverly Hills doctor, to be taken instead of tranquilizers.

Afraid to seem unsophisticated, Barney pretends that he also smokes marijuana and is simply trying to “cut down,” but Bobbi insists, and Barney does get “high.” At the end of the act Bobbi is still babbling, and Barney, convinced that he is dying, says, “So many things I wanted to do . . . but I’ll never do ’em. So many places I wanted to see . . . but I’ll never see ’em. Trapped! We’re all trapped. . . . Help! Help!”

Only one month has elapsed by the beginning of act 3, and for his third attempt Barney has brought champagne. His visitor is Jeanette Fisher, a thirty-nine-year-old woman, described by the playwright as having only one distinguishable quality: “She is probably the singularly most depressed woman on the face of the Western Hemisphere.”

From the first, it is clear that these two people have known each other for a long time; Barney and Jeanette’s husband, Mel, are close friends, and Thelma, Barney’s wife, is an intimate friend of Jeanette. Jeanette asks, “Why am I here, Barney?” and remarks that she does not find him physically attractive. Barney, however, attempts to make the best of the situation, insisting that Jeanette “put down her pocketbook,” a symbol of her insecurity.

The conversation, punctuated by requests for Jeanette to sit down, relax, and put down her pocketbook, revolves around the immorality she sees in the world, her assertion that life is not worth living, and her conviction that people are all rotten. When Barney disagrees, she dares him to name even three people who are decent, loving human beings. He suggests Thelma, John F. Kennedy, and Jesus Christ, and she agrees, but her statements about “being sure” of Thelma almost succeed in depressing Barney to her level. Then she tells him that the reason she has come today is to “get even” with her husband, Mel, who has been having an affair and insisted on telling her about it, because it is now the “new guiltless society” in which people can do anything they want to, as long as they are honest about it.

From this point to the end of the play, Barney is engaged in convincing Jeanette that he is a decent human being. There is rich comedy in his transition from mouse to lion when she contradicts him; he stalks her, demanding the “indecencies” that she believes are normal. Frightened of the changed Barney, she finally agrees that he is a decent, gentle, loving person. After Jeanette’s exit, Barney calls his wife, and the curtain descends as he is trying without much success to persuade her to meet him at his mother’s apartment.

Dramatic Devices

The physical setting of Last of the Red Hot Lovers, described as a small, modern apartment with paper-thin walls and “good furniture” from a past era, gives the audience a clear picture of the protagonist’s background. Barney’s attempts to obliterate all evidence of having been there, even to plumping up the sofa pillows, make clear his rather timid personality. Furthermore, his preference for this apartment, despite the perils of being overheard by the neighbors, illustrates his romanticism. He tells Elaine that a motel room “seemed too sordid.”

The apartment itself contrasts sharply with the women who visit there, especially Elaine and Bobbi, and much comic dialogue is based on Barney’s attempts to appear an experienced seducer in such a place.

Barney has chosen to attempt his affairs during a very brief period in which his mother is customarily out, doing charity work for a hospital. The short time span he has allowed makes for comedy, but it also points up Barney’s unrealistic expectations. How can one dream of true interaction, culminating in a memorable relationship, when there is a two-hour time limit?

“Running gags,” some of which are visual, are devices common to the comedy of Neil Simon. In fact, audiences are frequently so busy laughing that serious themes may go unrecognized. For example, Elaine’s need for a cigarette continues to her exit line: “Oh, please, God, let there be a machine in the lobby.” Bobbi’s increasingly bizarre stories are such a device, as is Jeanette’s reluctance to part with her handbag. The fishy smell that returns to Barney’s hands each afternoon is symbolic of his repetitive, boring existence, a motivation for his attempt to “live a little before he dies.”

Since this is a three-act play, Simon is able to show his protagonist in relation to three quite different women; however, Barney remains basically unchanged. Therefore, the audience is able to laugh at his ineptness while still remaining sympathetic to him. His inability to persuade Thelma to join him in what he hopes will be a romantic interlude makes a hilarious ending. However, it also serves to highlight the plight of those who, unable to deal with mid-life crisis, or change their standards of morality, must simply live out their decent, uneventful lives without realizing their romantic dreams.

Critical Context

Neil Simon’s reputation has from his first effort, Come Blow Your Horn (pr. 1960, pb. 1961), been based on his ability to make audiences laugh. Camouflaged by the comedy, however, there is usually an idea worth deeper consideration.

In the years between his first play and Last of the Red Hot Lovers, this concern became increasingly apparent. For example, in Plaza Suite (pr. 1968, pb. 1969), one of the segments features Sam Nash, a middle-aged man who, unlike Barney Cashman, seems very satisfied with his life. In fact, he tells his wife of twenty-three years that he would like to “live it all again.” What he really means is that he would like to be young again, and in his futile attempt to avoid the inevitable, Sam is having an extramarital affair with his young secretary. He resists his wife’s plea not to leave her alone on the night of their wedding anniversary, and for the first time a Simon play ends unhappily.

The playwright cut twenty-five comic lines out of Last of the Red Hot Lovers before its Broadway opening and convinced at least some critics that he was serious about showing the human predicament in comic terms. Clive Barnes and Marilyn Stasio applauded the effort, and a reviewer for Time wrote:

Behind the laughs lies Simon’s most serious play. In some peculiar way, comedy is no laughing matter. It is remarkably moral. It hopes to reform by ridicule. While it may seem like a strange thing to say, the only proper forebear of Neil Simon would be someone like Molière.

In The Gingerbread Lady (pr. 1970, pb. 1971), the playwright continued to mask serious problems with comedy, but the original ending had the alcoholic protagonist return to her old ways. Simon was persuaded during out-of-town tryouts to alter the script so that the audience would leave the theater with light hearts.

By the time Simon wrote California Suite (pr. 1976, pb. 1977), he was ready to include two segments (out of four) that are more serious than comic, although his characters still elicit laughter through their sophisticated repartee. In the first segment, “Visitor from New York,” a divorced couple compete for the loyalty of their seventeen-year-old daughter. The humor is based on the traditional rivalry between New Yorkers and Angelenos, but beneath the surface both Hannah and Bill Warren suffer genuine pain. In “Visitors from London” there are fewer light moments and much more pain as Diana Nichols, a British film star, and her husband, Sidney, face the reality of Sidney’s homosexuality. In this play Simon empathically treats the theme of human need and psychological dependence; it was a significant signal of plays to come.

Four admittedly autobiographical plays, Chapter Two (pr. 1977, pb. 1979), Brighton Beach Memoirs (pr. 1982, pb. 1984), Biloxi Blues (pb. 1976, pr. 1984), and Broadway Bound (pr. 1986, pb. 1987), continue Simon’s comic style, but serious themes are increasingly evident. Family conflicts, death and grief, and racial and religious prejudices are dealt with honestly in these plays. Another of his more serious plays, Lost in Yonkers (pr., pb. 1991) won for him his second Pulitzer Prize in drama as well as a Drama Desk Award.

Simon’s work has been deepening and broadening, but his insistence on mixing comedy and tragedy has met with some critical resistance. There have been those critics who insist that plays as hilarious as Simon’s are cannot deal with serious themes. However, the consensus is overwhelmingly favorable, and both his plays and his films make him one of the most important playwrights of his generation.

Sources for Further Study

Henry, William A., III. “Reliving a Poignant Past.” Time, December 15, 1986, 72-78.

Johnson, Robert K. Neil Simon. Boston: Twayne, 1983.

Konas, Gary, ed. Neil Simon: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1997.

McGovern, Edythe M. Neil Simon: A Critical Study. New York: Ungar, 1978.

Simon, Neil. Interview by Lawrence Linderman. Playboy 26 (February, 1979): 58.

Simon, Neil. The Play Goes On. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.

Woolf, Michael. “Neil Simon.” In American Drama, edited by Clive Bloom. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.