When asked to come up with words that describe the work of Neil Simon, there are lots of choices, but on almost every list would be the word "funny." Think "Odd Couple" or "Barefoot in the Park" or "Promises, Promises." Simon has a body of work that is immense in quantity and quality.

He is so good that it’s almost impossible to take one of his plays and turn it into an evening of sleepwalking. The production by Broccoli Theatricals and Encore Theatre Company that opens this weekend, however, does the impossible.

Simon wrote the semi-autobiographical "Laughter on the 23rd Floor" in 1993. The playwright began his writing career during the golden days of television as a writer on "Your Show of Shows," which was the home of Sid Caesar and where Mel Brooks was also one of the writers.

The play Simon wrote is funny. It’s set in the writer’s room of the show hosted by Max Prince (Caesar). The trials, tribulations and antics of the writers carry this play along. There are nods to some serious stuff, like the Communist scare driven by Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy. But this play is about jokes – the jokes the writers try out for their show and the jokes that are designed to make the play-going audience laugh.

The conceit of the show is that NBC executives have ordered the show cut from 90 minutes to an hour and have created an observer to watch over the creative process to make sure the show is suitable for middle American homes. In reality, moves like this marked the beginning of what Fred Friendly would call "the vast wasteland" of network television.

There is no quarrel to have with the quality of this script, even if it is not one of Simon’s greatest works. But this cast needs to understand that just because your line is a joke, you don’t have to shout it or pause before you tell it or mug when you say the line.

Comedy is hard under the best of circumstances. When you have one actor in the play – Noah Silverstein who plays Max – who seems to have an understanding of character depth, and the remainder of a cast that doesn’t seem to have a clue, you are in for a clunker.

And that’s what you have here.

I’m not going to spotlight individual actors in this who are found wanting. Nobody needs that. But there are some things about a comedy that these actors might consider.

A play with seven or eight people on stage at the same time requires more emphasis on listening than on talking. The way this production works is that each actor waits for his or her turn to make a joke, then spouts their line and everyone hangs around waiting for the laugh. It’s amateur theater at its most uncivilized and not up to the standards for these producers – who have hit home runs with productions like the wonderful "The Addams Family Musical" early in this season.

Just because the playwright has written a funny line for you to say doesn’t mean that you have to try and make it funny. Let the words speak for themselves.

The disparity in acting chops and experience is so vast that there are almost no fixes that would seem easy. Silverstein is actually very funny, which makes the contrast with the rest of the cast even more stark.

Great comedy comes only when the audience actually believes that these are real people acting this way. There is no chance of that in this production. This cast is trapped in some kind of nether world where they have fooled themselves into thinking they are creating an evening of memorable theater.

The only real fools here are the people who come to this show, expecting to be entertained.

"Laughter on the 23rd Floor" runs through May 9 at Theatre Unchained.