STAGE REVIEW : Neil Simon’s ‘Women’ Is an Odd Uncoupling

“You wanna get laughs or you wanna get better?” asks one of several women in “Jake’s Women,” Neil Simon’s latest play, which opened Thursday at the Old Globe. “If I get laughs,” replies Jake, “I’ll get better.”

That is exactly how “Jake’s Women” feels--like someone working at getting laughs while working at getting better.

Not funny, McGee.

Here is Jake (Peter Coyote), a successful writer, living in a super-fashionable apartment in New York’s SoHo (a terrific set by Tony Straiges, brightly lit by Tharon Musser).

He’s the father of a happy daughter Mollie (played at 13 by Sarah Michelle Gellar and at 21 by the engaging Amelia Campbell). True, Jake’s first wife Julie (Felicity Huffman) died young in an auto accident, but Jake has remarried, and his new wife Maggie (Stockard Channing), an advertising executive, loves him and--to make this a more perfect union--dearly loves his daughter Mollie.

So why is this man unhappy?

Why can’t he let go of the past? Why can’t he enjoy the present? Why does he play around? Why does he lie to his wife while insisting that she, who has made one inadvertent slip, level with him?

Because, as you may have begun to suspect, Jake is very neurotic and Jake is not a nice man.

Being alone a lot, and hopelessly self-absorbed (for which he endlessly, tediously rebukes himself), Jake airs his Angst by conjuring up the women in his life and talking to their imaginary presences.

“Blithe Spirit” this is not. The device is perilous, smacking too much of convenience, not enough of engagement. It is also insufficiently explored. When Jake tries to throttle the “imaginary” Maggie at one point, it feels as if some unseen boundary had been crossed. We know he sees these women, but can he touch them too?

Jake suspects Maggie’s about to leave him. Incapable of discussing it with her, he discusses it with his “materialized” nagging sister Karen (Candice Azzara) and his “materialized” therapist Edith (Joyce Van Patten), a ditz who must be related to the female therapist in Chris Durang’s “Beyond Therapy.”

Would that we were beyond therapy. “Jake’s Women” feels too much like therapy gone awry. Even Jake’s reconstituted first wife gets into this act.

When Jake finally gets up the gumption to talk to the real-life Maggie about their problems, they separate. Jake tries to date. A scene among Jake, his live date-of-the-moment Sheila (Talia Balsam) and the “materialized” Maggie (who moved out six months before), has true comic possibilities. But they remain either desperately forced or merely unrealized.

What have we got here? “Chapter Three.” A cross between Simon’s “I Ought to Be in Pictures,” “Chapter Two” and more recent events in his life--or more semi-psychoautobiography from the Simon files.

Which would be fine, of course, if any of it were funny. But “Jake’s Women” feels like a protracted “poor me” whine that Peter Coyote’s charmless Jake seems powerless to rescue. Even Channing’s considerable comic gifts are confronted with insuperable odds. Balsam can’t make Sheila flesh and blood. Campbell has the requisite sweetness as Mollie in a role that demands little else, but even such pros as Van Patten and Azzara are fighting an uphill battle.

The show is as flat as the Mojave Desert and, surprising for Simon, devoid of even enough workable one-liners to keep the audience interest from flagging. Thursday’s crowd was the stillest Simon audience in memory, as if the people were politely waiting for the real play to begin. It never did.

This partly explains why director Ron Link was fired over the weekend and replaced by the Globe’s artistic director, Jack O’Brien. But neither man should be held accountable. It is the writer who must look to his script.

Just like its protagonist, “Jake’s Women” as a play sends out a mixed and troubling message. “We need to be cautious and yet courageous,” Jake says to Sheila. “We need to hold back and not let anything stop us.” That’s the word we get, subliminally. It’s as if Simon decided to write about himself but got cold feet. Like Jake, he’s holding out on us--and worse, on himself.

What’s next? For all concerned, let’s hope not Broadway. “Jake’s Women” needs to descend peacefully into a drawer for serious reconsideration--or not--at a much later date.

At the Simon Edison Centre for the Performing Arts in Balboa Park, Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; matinees Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m.; also Sundays, March 28, 29 and April 10 at 7 p.m. Ends April 15. Tickets: $20-$27.50; (619) 239-2255.