TEHRAN – A loose adaptation of the 1993 play “Laughter on the 23rd Floor” by Neil Simon will be staged at the Tehran Theater Complex in the capital for two weeks.

Hesan Houshdar has directed the play and also performs in it along with Amirhossein Shishehgaran, Mehryar Khodaei, Meysam Goudarzi, Kamand Shouhani, Amirhossein Balouchi, Mohammad Vaghefi, Helia Hassanzadeh, and Alireza Atabaki.

With the first performance set for October 8, the 90-minute play will run through October 23 at the Tehran Theater Complex, located at No. 3, Farhangi Alley, Vesal Shirazi St., Enghelab Ave.

It focuses on the star and writers of a TV comedy-variety show in the 1950s, inspired by Simon's own early career experience as a junior writer (along with his brother Danny) for “Your Show of Shows” and “Caesar's Hour.”

The play focuses on Sid Caesar-like Max Prince, the star of a weekly comedy-variety show, and his staff, including Simon's alter-ego Lucas Brickman, who maintains a running commentary on the writing, fighting, and wacky antics that take place in the writers' room. Max has an ongoing battle with NBC executives, who fear his humor is too sophisticated for Middle America.

Brickman is a young comedy writer trying to prove himself in the fraternal writers' room for The Max Prince Show. It’s 1953, and with McCarthyism running rampant, the network demanding budget cuts, and a host who can’t manage to stay sober, things aren’t looking good.

Playwright Neil Simon, a television comedy writer himself, wrote “Laughter on the 23rd Floor” as a roman à clef: the characters are based on real people but given fictional names. There’s the flashy Milt, who prefers quantity over quality when it comes to jokes; Ira, the hypochondriac agitator; Val, the fussy Russian immigrant; Brian, who claims to have somehow sold a screenplay he’s yet to write; the sophisticated Kenny; and the defensive Carol, the sole female writer.

Packed with Simon’s characteristic wit and offbeat characters, this ensemble comedy offers a fly-on-the-wall look at a zany TV writers' room and the colorful personalities inside it.

This ensemble comedy features all the attendant comic drama as the harried writing staff frantically scrambles to top each other with gags while competing for the attention of star madman Max Prince.

The play is notable not only for its insider's look at the personalities and processes of television comedy writing, but also for its reflection of the political and social undercurrents of its time, in particular the rise of Joseph McCarthy, relationships between various (European) American ethnicities, and attitudes toward women.

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.

SS/SAB