So much talent, wasted on such weak material. I would imagine Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite was dated when it premiered in 1968 but now even megawatt star power like Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick can’t redeem it. The only thing that saved the evening from being a complete washout was seeing this long-married couple onstage playing long-married couples, at the beautifully restored Hudson Theatre.
I can check off so much that is right about the production, starting with John Lee Beatty's magnificent set, a lavish suite at the Plaza Hotel that was applauded as soon as the curtain rose. John Benjamin Hickey deserves credit as the director. Jane Greenwood’s costumes took me back to 1968/69 when the play is set. I loved the psychedelically colored blue dress in Act Two, except it would have been shorter at that time. Mine certainly were. All of this makes the show sparkle visually.
And Parker and Broderick sparkle with their talent, especially Parker who is a genius of comic timing and, in Act Three, physical comedy. The trouble is, the play is rarely funny. Not the lines and certainly not the hackneyed plots of the three different storylines, which amount to three unrelated one-act plays about relationships, all set in Suite 719 at the Plaza Hotel.
I liked Act One the best. Parker, as Karen Nash, plays a suburban housewife in her late 40s who has booked the same suite where she and her husband spent their honeymoon. At first she seems like a woman excited to be celebrating her wedding anniversary but once her grumpy husband, Sam (Broderick), arrives we see that her goal is to try to save her troubled marriage. He contradicts her on everything — the date of their anniversary, their honeymoon suite number, her age and what they should order from room service. She wants champagne and he wants black coffee. I won’t tell you where this leads because many people in the audience gasped at a reveal that was obvious from the start.
The reason I liked that act the best is because Parker’s character had the most depth, although that word is too strong. Simon didn’t create any deep characters for this play. As an actress she shows the pro she is in every facial expression, line delivery and movement around the set. She made Karen as real as she could be with the given material.
By Act Two the female character, Muriel Tate, has descended to the ditzy blonde stereotype. Parker looks adorable in that bright blue dress and a long, straight blonde wig (Tom Watson, hair & wig design), playing the high school sweetheart of Jesse Kiplinger, Broderick in plaid pants, blue turtleneck and prominent sideburns. He’s now a famous Hollywood producer and she’s a New Jersey wife and mother who visits him in his suite, saying she wanted to “drop by for a drink” after not seeing him for 17 years. You will also know exactly where this one is going.
Finally, in the most tedious act, Parker and Broderick are again a long-married couple, this time trying to coax their daughter out of the locked bathroom so she can get married downstairs. This is the most farcical act and the audience loved it. I didn’t. Parker’s Norma Hubley was over-the-top in silliness as the mother of the bride. Broderick, as her husband, Roy, had some good moments, especially when he climbed out onto the ledge in the hopes of making his way to the bathroom to get his daughter through the door and down to the wedding that was costing him a small fortune.
I didn’t need to sit through two hours and 40 minutes to know why this Simon play had never been revived on Broadway until now. I had seen a production decades ago at a Maryland dinner theatre, a fitting venue. I’m sure the show will do well through its June 26 run, thanks to the star power of its leads. They haven’t worked together since How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in 1996 when they were still dating. I wish, though, that they had been brought back together onstage in a play worthy of their talents and our intelligence.
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