He hounds her, pathetically and incessantly, about their lives together and wasn't it all just beautiful? (Is this why he called her so urgently?) She counters that he was too successful as a businessman to be a good husband.

Then there's their fresh-from-college daughter, who breaks her engagement to her Harvard Law School boyfriend, a guy who - get this - has no idea that his best friend in this tiny rural summer place was his fiancee's serious boy-toy only last year. Phew.

Then there's - oh, forget it, it just goes on and on in Neil Simon's Proposals, which opened last weekend at the Ritz Theatre Company in Haddon Heights. Proposals lasted for 87 Broadway performances a dozen years ago. Compare that to Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1963), which rang its Broadway curtain down 1,532 times, and you get an idea of how differently the two plays were received.

With good reason: Proposals, when its characters aren't falsely glib, is so busy concerning itself with the "what went wrong?" question that it shouldn't be set in a mountain summer house (even a perfectly rendered one, by designer W. Kris Clayton). "I left out of fear!" "I left out of guilt!" Proposals would be more at home in a therapist's office.

Which is not to say that it's dull or sad - it may lack a scintilla of irony, but it unleashes plenty of Neil Simon chuckles, frequently unplumbed in Ernie Jewell's production. Laugh lines are thrown away, particularly by the men in the cast.

The women seem to get it - their timing is better, their sense of the situation clearer. And one standout, Donna Marie Earl, makes this production worthwhile, despite its lapses and Simon's script. She has the best-written role - an African American housekeeper who takes no prisoners - and she rides it like a high-performance luxury car; everyone else eats her dirt through two acts. A simple "Mmmmm-hmmm!" from her is worth 10 Neil Simon lines.

Tom Guzzi Jr. puts a nice spin on a Miami character raised in the mob, and Amanda Carlisle and Steve Gleich are effective as the daughter and the dad.

In the last half hour, the writing takes a turn; Simon finally has people doing something on stage besides parading the pounding hearts that rip at their sleeves. The cast responds. Everyone's finally pumping, as though they know that this part of the play is Neil Simon, for real.