LAUGHTER ON THE 23RD FLOOR, Open Eye Productions, at Angel Island. The actors in Malcolm Haymes’s go-for-broke revival may lack the big resumes that came with the 1994 Briar Street local debut of this play, but they do comic justice to Neil Simon’s loving look at the golden age of television. Sounding a lot like skits from the original Your Show of Shows, Simon’s autobiographical work doles out guffaws as TV gag writers of the 50s (surrogates for Larry Gelbart, Selma Diamond, Imogene Coca, Mel Brooks, Mel Tolkin, Carl Reiner, and Simon himself) clash and kvetch. Presiding is the benevolent czar of yuks Max Prince (Sid Caesar, of course). An apoplectic comic genius, Max punches holes through walls at the thought of Joe McCarthy and frets over the NBC programming morons who want everything for nothing–and, please, dumb it down.
