Dorothy Ames is the widow of Allen Boretz, co-writer of Room Service. She is also the longtime owner of 15 Vandam Street, home of The SoHo Playhouse.

“My husband wrote Room Service in the 1930s, long before I knew him—we met in 1962 and married in 1968—but I’ve seen the play many times in the US, Great Britain and France. I saw the show for the first time in the 1970’s on opening night at the Comédie-Française. Of course, neither Allen nor I understood a word, since it was all in French, but the audience seemed to enjoy themselves. The show is still produced all the time; we just signed agreements with theaters in Japan and Germany, in fact.

            When George Abbott directed the original Broadway production in 1937, he asked Allen and the co-writer John Murray to rewrite the second and third acts. They each wrote versions, but John liked Allen’s so much, he insisted they use that one, so that’s the play as we know it.

            During rehearsals for the Broadway run, Allen had constant struggles with the lead actor, Sam Levene, who had a famously difficult disposition. They were friendly—and respectful of each other—but they had some stormy battles over character interpretation. Allen always remembered Sam as great fun, but cantankerous.

            It gave Allen great pleasure to tweak the elite—he was passionate and outspoken about his beliefs, which is why he was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee—and he even snuck in a little jab in this play. In one of the final scenes, the Senator asks the playwright to change the name of one of his characters: To the Washington bureaucrat, “Conrad” is dangerously too close to “comrade.”

            Room Service is a good illustration of the way the American farce differs from those in the French or British traditions. Those turn on a philosophical construct: making fun of the upper classes, lampooning their attitudes and, often, hypocrisies. In the American farce and in this play in particular, the comedy lies in how the characters cope with the situation they’re in, not just in the gags and pratfalls. The characters are fighting their circumstances, reaching for life, and that’s why we identify with them. Dan Wackerman, the director of this production, has evoked that brilliantly: He found the heart of the struggle, that sense of striving, and he makes us care about these people. That deepens the comedy and makes the laughs more satisfying.

I am just overwhelmed by his interpretation; it truly is the best I’ve ever seen, and it’s completely faithful to Allen’s vision. That’s why I wanted it to run at the SoHo Playhouse."