199. THE GINGERBREAD LADY. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Maureen Stapleton, Charles Siebert.

THE GINGERBREAD LADY [Comedy-Drama/Alcoholism/Family/Friendship/
Homosexuality/Show Business] A: Neil Simon; D: Robert Moore; S: David Hays; C: Frank Thompson; L: Martin Aronstein; P: Saint-Subber; T: Plymouth Theatre; 12/13/70-5/29/71 (193) Note: the description below is followed by a special addition provided by Ron Fassler. I hope you enjoy it.

 Betsy von Furstenberg, Ayn Ruymen, Maureen Stapleton, Michael Lombard.

With The Gingerbread Lady Neil Simon was trying to go beyond the popular laugh-a-minute, gag-riddled comedies with which he’d made his fortune. He sought to penetrate more deeply into a dramatic situation through a central character, Evy Mears (Maureen Stapleton), a once-popular singer who is on the road back from alcoholism after a 10-week sanatorium “cure.”

Returning to her New York apartment, she is forced to deal with the problems foisted on her by her well-meaning but self-involved friends: a beauty worried about her fading looks (Betsy Von Furstenberg) and a gay actor who can’t get any parts (Michael Lombard). She must also struggle to strengthen her relationship with her previously estranged 17-year-old daughter (Ayn Ruyman). It is the latter’s love that finally pulls her through, after she has been once more driven to booze and other self-destructive behavior.

Michael Lombard, Maureen Stapleton.

For most of the critics The Gingerbread Lady was a noble failure, sustained only by the typical Simon wisecracks, added to lighten the atmosphere, and by Stapleton’s performance as the smartass, indomitable Evy. Simon himself appears to have been unhappy with the play, feeling it still wasn’t ready to face New York audiences and critics.

The major problems involved the overly contrived plot, stock characters, frequently banal jokes, and confusion between comic and serious styles. Clive Barnes admitted difficulty at making up his mind, and expressed the wish for another day to decide. His carefully worded review delighted in Simon’s skillful use of humor and pathos. John J. O’Connor had no difficulty pronouncing the work a “dud,” nor did Martin Gottfried flinch from calling it “embarrassingly trite.” With this play, the critics began to wage war on Simon for betraying his natural comic gifts and trying too hard to be “serious.”

Ayn Ruymen, Maureen Stapleton.

Maureen Stapleton’s performance drew fountains of praise for its honesty, power, energy, and insight. “The baritone note of outrage in her voice, the friendly desperation of her manner, the fierce anxiety, yet even fiercer pride of her attitude, all combine in a portrait of a memorable lady,” wrote Barnes. Most of the reviewers who did not care for her blamed the shallowness of the role more than they did the actress, but Stapleton nemesis John Simon attacked her for looking nothing like her character and for lacking “any sort of grace, charm, poise, or sexiness that would suggest either music or glamor in her past.”

That didn’t stop Stapleton from snaring a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance, or a Tony for Best Actress, Play.

In 1971, Ron Fassler, now a writer, actor, and director, was a theatre-crazy adolescent traveling to Broadway from Great Neck as often as possible to see everything he could, usually from up in the cheap seats, Amazingly, he wrote and preserved personal reviews of the 200 or so shows he visited, publishing some of them in his delightful 2017 book, Up in the Cheap Seats: A Historical Memoir of Broadway (Griffith Moon). Ron has agreed to provide this series with occasional PDFs of his reviews, just as he wrote them, with spelling and grammatical errors intact. Ron, of course, now is a professional reviewer, albeit on Covid-19 hiatus, so it's a pleasure to be able to provide samples of  his often quite perceptive boyhood musings, "warts and all," as he himself says below of The Gingerbread Lady.