PRISONER OF SECOND AVENUE: NWF State College Series Spring Theatrical Productio

Northwest Florida State College brings one of Neil Simon’s best comedies to the Sprint Theater stage at the Mattie Kelly Arts Center in Niceville. “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” will be presented March 12 to 15 at &:30 p.m. by the college’s Fine & Performing Arts Division. In the play, main character Mel Edison is a well-paid executive of a high-end Manhattan firm, which has suddenly hit the skids, and he gets the ax.

His wife Edna takes a job to tide them over, and then she too is sacked. Compounded by the air-pollution killing his plants, and with the walls of the apartment being paper-thin, allowing him a constant earful of his neighbors private lives, things can't seem to get any worse...Then he's robbed, and his psychiatrist dies with $23,000 of his money. Mel does the only thing left for him to do-he has a nervous breakdown and it's the best thing that ever happened to him.

According to the New York Post, the show is, “a gift for taking a grave subject and, without losing sight of its basic seriousness, treating it with hearty but sympathetic humor...A talent for writing a wonderful funny line...full of humor and intelligence. Fine fun." - New York Post and Time noted, "Creates an atmosphere of casual cataclysm, an everyday urban purgatory of copelessness from which laughter seems to be released like vapor from the city's manholes."

Tickets are $15 adults and $10 for youth age 18 or younger. The 185-seat Sprint Theater is the smaller of two theater venues at the college's performing arts center and advance ticket purchase is recommended. The Box Office will open at 6:00 p.m. March 12 to 15 for any remaining tickets, subject to availability. The college will also host special Student Nights exclusively for NWFSC students or area high school students who will be admitted free of charge by showing a current student ID on March 10 and 11th. Student nights are on a first-come basis and seating is limited. Doors open at 7:00 pm on Student Nights.

The Sprint Theater is at the Mattie Kelly Arts Center at Northwest Florida State College, 100 College Blvd., Niceville, Fl. Box Office: (850) 729-6000 or www.mattiekellyartscenter.org.