Laughter on the 23rd Floor, now playing at Mad Cow Theatre, is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon that hearkens back to the days when he was a neophyte comedy writer for the great funnyman Sid Caesar during TV's so-called Golden Age, the early 1950s. Based on a gaggle of Simon's real-life colleagues – Mel Brooks, Mel Tolkin, Larry Gelbart and other jokesters who toiled on Caesar's Your Show of Shows – Laughter is not one of Simon's more deeply probing works. His proxy in the play, Lucas (nicely played by Connor Marsico), is mostly an observer who watches from the sidelines, periodically commenting on the more seasoned writers with whom Simon had the luck to associate while learning the craft that would make him one of America's most celebrated playwrights.

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