Contents:
BILOXI BLU
"The F Briga": Neil Simon's Gay Characters As a playwright who has achieved popular acclaim as well as artistic succs over the past twenty-five years, Neil Simon provis an stctive example of changg middle-class Amerin attus toward homosexualy. While he sometim employs gay stereotyp the service of an easy lgh, Simon's gay characters are by and large sympathetic and admirable, although somewhat pathetic. If Simon's portrayal of them evc an imperfect unrstandg that rarely go beyond the superficial, the evolutn of his thkg about homosexualy sce the 1970s approximat the earnt, well-meang tolerance of his dienc.
Simon's first gay character appears The Ggerbread Lady (1971). Jimmy is the first character seen onstage when the play opens, and the stage directns scribe him as " his early forti, portly and probably homosexual.