One of the funniest plays written by one of the most prolific American playwrights is just a few steps away from opening Tuesday.

"Barefoot in the Park," the comedy by three-time Tony Award winner Neil Simon, will run July 10-14 at East Carolina University's McGinnis Theatre.

The performance, which marks the halfway point of ECU/Loessin Summer Theatre's 2007 repertoire, is the second of the group's three summer shows.

"Barefoot in the Park" made its Broadway debut in 1963 and was made into a 1967 major motion picture with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.

The play follows a pair of newlyweds as they set up house in a tiny, high-rise New York apartment with no heat and a hole in the skylight.

The couple must learn to live with eccentric neighbors, the young bride's overbearing mother and their own very different personalities in this love-and-laughs production.

Simon, the only playwright ever to have four plays on Broadway at the same time, is said to have been inspired to write the play, his third, by his marriage at the time.

Jeff Woodruff, managing director, said "Barefoot in the Park," which is billed by ECU as "one of the funniest plays ever," is brilliant in ways he cannot describe.

"How would you say that Elizabeth Barrett Browning is brilliant?" he asked, comparing the quality of Simon's work to that of one of the most respected British poets of the Victorian era.

"It's a wonderfully written play. It's hard for me to describe what's funny about it."

Lesley Shires, a 2004 ECU graduate who will play young wife Corrie Bratter, said part of the humor and appeal of "Barefoot in the Park" is its pertinence to audience members' personal experiences.

"People will go, 'Oh, I remember when we were first married and that happened to me,'" she said. "It really resonates with anyone who's ever been in any kind of relationship."

Shires said the dynamics of the show, as well as the opportunity to play Corrie Bratter, brought her back to Greenville from New York for the first time in three years.

"She's not far away from me," Shires said of her fun-loving character. "She's innocent, and she's young, and she's happy and she's ready. She flies by the seat of her pants.

"I'm not a little girl, but I'm ready for anything and everything that comes my way."

Shires, who plans to continue her education in dramatic art by beginning graduate school in the fall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said working with the five other actors in this riotously funny production has been an incredible experience.

"Everybody is really talented. I'm loving working with them," she said. "Who wouldn't want to do that for three or four weeks?"