Barefoot in the Park

Rear, left to right: Heather Hayhow, Jason Bowen. Front, left to right, Valerie Winslow, Dylan Chenier.

Paul and Corrie Bratter are newlyweds in every sense of the word. After a six-day honeymoon, they are settling into their top-floor walkup apartment in a New York brownstone, with a leaky skylight and a tiny bathroom with no tub — and an eccentric Hungarian neighbour named Victor Velasco who has to get to his attic apartment through their window because the landlord has locked him out for not paying the rent.

Things only get more complicated when Paul and Corrie get a surprise visit from Corrie's opinionated, bossy mother and decide to play matchmaker during a dinner with her and Velasco.

Meanwhile Corrie and Paul have some work to do on their own relationship. He's a buttoned-down young lawyer, she's more of a free spirit and wants Paul to lighten up. Gradually, they're learning to live together.

Barefoot in the Park opened at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway in 1963 and ran for nearly four years, making it Neil Simon's longest-running play and the 10th-longest-running non-musical production in Broadway history. It has seen thousands of performances since, including a Broadway revival in 2006 and one in London in 2012. Domino Theatre has produced Barefoot twice before, in 1992 and 2003.

Heather Hayhow and Tony Sturman

Richard Jodoin and Heather Hayhow

Neil Simon

Neil Simon was born in New York in 1927. He started his career in the 1940s writing scripts for radio and television with his brother Danny, then moved on to writing for the New York theatre.

His first Broadway production was a revue called Catch a Star, written with his brother Danny. His first Broadway play, Come Blow Your Horn, opened in 1961.

His best-known plays since then include The Odd Couple, The Goodbye Girl, Lost in Yonkers and the autobiographical trilogy Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound.

Simon has won three Tony awards (for The Odd Couple and Biloxi Blues plus a special Tony for contribution to theatre in 1975) and has had more plays adapted for film than any other American playwright. In 1983 he became the only living American playwright to have a Broadway theatre named after him. Simon died in August 2018.

We would like to acknowledge that this production takes place on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples. We honour and give thanks to the land, its inhabitants and their enduring cultures.

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