Fools

What is that hysterically funny comedy about a 200-year-old curse, a pair of star-crossed lovers and a village composed of complete idiots? Got you fooled? It’s Neil Simon’s Fools, a laugh ’til you drop comedic fable about a remote Russian town with a severe learning disability. When young and eager Leon Tolchinsky arrives in answer to a plea for a new schoolteacher, he learns the village has been cursed with stupidity. What Leon doesn’t know is that if he stays in the village for more than 24 hours, he too will fall under the curse. Leon meets a shepherd so stupid, he can’t remember his own first name, the befuddled Dr. Zubritsky who thinks the secret of man’s existence is the number 12 (or is it 14?) and his dim-witted wife, Lenya, who sets fire to the drapes because she can’t find a candle. These are just some of the villagers that idealistic school teacher Leon Tolchinsky must face as he tries to educate and win the heart of the doctor’s beautiful but empty-headed daughter, Sophia.