203. GOD'S FAVORITE. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Nick LaTour, Rosetta LeNoire, Maria Karnilova, Laura Esterman, Lawrence John Moss, Vincent Gardenia, Terry Kiser.

GOD’S FAVORITE [Comedy/Bible/Family/Fantasy/Religion] A: Neil Simon; D: Michael Bennett; S: William Ritman; C: Joseph G. Aulisi; L: Tharon Musser; P: Emanuel Azenberg and Eugene V. Wolsk; T: Eugene O’Neill Theatre; 12/11/74-3/21/75 (119)

Maria Karnilova, Vincent Gardenia, Charles Nelson Reilly.

Neil Simon, whose comic mastery is often based on the sufferings of his central characters, selected one of the great sufferers of all times for his hero in the unsuccessful God’s Favorite. That, of course, would be the Biblical Job, but Simon transmuted the disaster-ridden gentleman into the character of Joe Benjamin (Vincent Gardenia), a wealthy, middle-class, Long Island businessman living in thoroughly tacky luxury and surrounded by a wacky family. They include his wife, Rose (Maria Karnilova), daughter, Sara (Laura Esterman), and two sons, Ben (Lawrence John Moss) and David (Terry Kiser). Each has a screws-loose personality.

Joe is visited by God’s messenger, an effeminate movie fanatic from Jackson Heights, Queens, named Sidney Lipton (Charles Nelson Reilly), who tells Joe that his faith in the Lord is to be tested. Consequently, Joe loses his factory in a conflagration, his home is converted to a smoldering ruin, he undergoes the torment of innumerable aches and pains and itches; and he loses his family when he refuses to give in and renounce God. In the end, he’s rewarded by the deity for his unflagging faith.

No matter how cruel the visitations on Joe and his world, gag lines keep flying, forcing the audience to laugh in the face of catastrophes any one of which could reduce a devout person to atheism. (Simon had lost his beloved wife, Joan, to bone cancer two years earlier, so one can imagine how it might have influenced his thinking.) One of Sidney’s lines popular with most critics states that the devil is a look-alike for Robert Redford. God jokes are present in abundance. At one point, Sidney dials God long distance; when he finally gets through, he has only reached God’s answering service.

Martin Gottfried was one reviewer who thought the play “offensive to anyone seriously religious.” He not only found it unfunny, he called it “two hours’ worth of a ridiculous idea.” Jack Kroll said that Simon had achieved his “greatest feat of trivialization by turning the Book of Job into a Simonic sitcom.” There was no “genuine humor,” complained Edwin Wilson, who also was distressed by the pasteboard characters and lack of insight shown. Clive Barnes opined that too many laughs were cheaply gained from mere mention of familiar brand names and TV shows. He also noted that the anticlimactic ending seriously hurt the play. Howard Kissel rejected the comedy as “the most abysmally emptyheaded play I have ever seen,” while John Simon dubbed it “abominable.”

A few felt otherwise. John Beaufort considered it “an uproarious morality play for a secular age,” and Douglas Watt believed it to be “awesomely funny. And rather sweet.  And healing. The work of a man of vision, tunnel vision.”

There were, even from the hostile camp, words of praise for Michael Bennett’s manic, swiftly tempoed staging, and William Ritman’s sets, which earned the designer a Tony nomination. Vincent Gardenia was his usual expert self as Joe, garnering all the laughs his role required while remaining believable and sympathetic.  Others in the cast included Rosetta LeNoire and Nick LaTour.