The late sixties, a time on the cusp of hippies and letting your hair down, the times they are a-changing, parents aghast at their children’s liberty. Neil Simon shows us the parents, square, in long marriages, negotiating their own failings.
Plaza Suite the play premièred in 1968, the film with Walter Matthau in 1971. Three middle-aged couples book into the Plaza Hotel, suite 719. Sarah Jessica Parker (making her London debut) and husband Matthew Broderick play all three couples in three comic vignettes. Broderick is no Matthau.
A two-hander in essence (there is some support from Rohit Gokani as the Waiter, Eric Sirakian as Bellhop and fiancé, Charlie Oscar as the secretary and the daughter) Parker outshines her husband and I am sure he is delighted. She is the Sex and The City star; he is the support. She’s on dazzling form, comic timing, both verbal and physical, is superb.
Act one, Visitor from Mamaroneck, sees Karen Nash arrive ahead of her business husband at the suite she’s booked to celebrate their twenty-something wedding anniversary, ordering champagne and nibbles. She is excited, trying to revive a marriage, but he is quite the dampener, disputing how many years ago they were here for their honeymoon.
What comes next is very predictable—his secretary arrives, ‘business’ calls. Though why anyone would fall for this stiff, dull man is anybody’s guess. Karen, of course, knew all along.
Even Parker can’t get this stale, clichéd story off the ground. The next one, Visitor from Hollywood, is better suited to her ‘cookie’ personality. Broderick, on the other hand, reminds my guest of Austin Powers, as he tries to seduce his high school sweetheart, now married with three children. It’s his outfit that does it: check trousers, blue polo neck, orange blazer, awkward body language and hammy acting.
They haven’t seen each other for seventeen years. He is a big Hollywood producer now; she in theory is a demure married woman, in gloves and headband. But the dress gives it away, psychedelic purples, pinks and greens (I remember wearing a similar one in San Francisco about that time—memories, eh…), and she’s high on alcohol. Easy prey, but she’s gagging for it, seduced by the names of celebrities he’s worked with and sat next to at award ceremonies.
Finally, another married couple in Visitor from Forest Hills, parents of the bride who is locked in the bathroom. This is the best of the three. Verbally tighter, funnier with some crazy physical ’Harold Lloyd’ comedy, but best of all are the two words the longhaired fiancé says to his bride-to-be, which brings her happily out. Parents and children, two different species... “She was better off in the bathroom,” dad says. And isn’t the mother always to blame…
Lightweight comedy, Simon often drew on his own Bronx and Washington Heights upbringing, on his parents’ volatile marriage, so the psychology is just so. And his linguistic agility comes from long apprenticeship on comedy shows in the 1950s. Comedy was escapism from a miserable early life. Escapism we need, too, but it doesn’t warrant the ticket prices—poof and it’s gone. It’s a blancmange.
A sell-out at the Hudson Theatre New York, this John Benjamin Hickey directed production was apparently “the third-highest grossing play revival in Broadway history during its limited 19-week engagement”.
Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite can hardly fail in London with its original Broadway celebrity cast in what is basically a double act, he the foil, the feed, to her stand-up. And can she punch it. Tickets are selling at silly prices, £300+ for best seats—are critics even required?
If you’d paid eye-watering sums, you’d be determined to enjoy whatever was placed in front of you, wouldn’t you? The minute the celebrity stars show their faces, before a line is spoken, they are received with warm applause. Neil Simon’s subtly dropped one-liners and situational comedy keep the audience laughing. I’m harder to please. The music is jaunty.
The prolific Neil Simon (1927–2018) wrote tons of plays and films (many adaptations of his plays from 1966–1998). There’s a treasure trove of possibilities for revival. Maybe not original—Noël Coward, who two or three years earlier had written Suite in Three Keys, set in a suite in a Swiss Hotel, commented on the similarity—but generous and not too demanding.
Apparently you can apply for £40 daily lottery tickets. “At every performance, ten tickets—normally located on the front row of the stalls—will be exclusively available for purchase by lottery winners. Winners will be randomly selected every Monday for all of the performances in the following week… Winners will be sent a unique booking link (maximum 2 tickets per person) and have 24 hours to pay for their tickets.”