PLAZA SUITE
by Neil Simon
Directed by John Benjamin Hickey
Starring Sara Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick
Hudson Theatre
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
I was worried about Neil Simon’s 1968 trilogy of one-acts, Plaza Suite, being revived for 2022 Broadway. Simon was undoubtedly a comedy master, his success remains unparalleled, and I’m old enough to have seen 25 of his 32 plays in their original productions (and the rest in mainstream revival). And as the decades through that exposure moved forward, something sad started to become increasingly clear: which was that, while Simon’s comedy seemed to have a timeless feel, his sensibility was more anchored in his time than it had first seemed. In terms of dramatizing socialization, the particularization of some of his female characters (by no means all) and their relationship to men, and etc., the illusion of timelessness had more to do with immediacy; his then-present-day plays represented various strata of middle-to-upper middle class white (and often, implicitly or specifically, Jewish) America of their eras. And being inherently a of populist, mainstream sensibility—one that reassures certain aspects of the status quo rather than challenges them—he unwittingly memorialized norms that would inevitably have to change.
(And those have to be distinguished from his quartet of nostalgic autobiographical plays featuring lower-middle-class urban Jewish characters—Lost in Yonkers and the semi-autobiographical Brighton Beach Trilogy—set between 1932 and 1944, which gave him, the advantage of historical perspective on the manners and mores of a bygone period; which figures prominently into why they’re among is best work.)
All this sounds like most of his plays have been compromised by the passage of time and I don’t think that’s true either; but enough of the ones that were hugely successful for him, and readily associated with the Neil Simon “brand”—Come Blow Your Horn, Barefoot in the Park, The Last of the Red Hot Lovers come to mind—seem much less friendly to revival over a half century after their debuts (with The Odd Couple and The Sunshine Boys [the latter arguably, for some] as standout exceptions). Some of this is just due to the tiresome intolerance of those millennials who haven’t the perspicacity or simple desire to understand the flow and change of popular culture in any year before they were born…but some of it is also due to Simon being, in a way, the apotheosis of a particular stage comedy era whose ground was already beginning to shift, imperceptibly at first, when he was at the height of his industry and artistic power, and a counterculture shakeup, existing side-by-side, was gaining momentum in what would, long game, prove a starburst of directions.
And Plaza Suite—each of its plays taking place in Room 719—would seem to be a prime target for are you kidding me? woke-ness.
All you have to do is thumbnail the premises; Visitor from Mamaroneck is about a middle aged couple whose marriage is in trouble, the husband admitting to a midlife crisis affair and the wife way too willing to be accepting—on their 25th anniversary; Visitor from Hollywood is about a thrice-divorced movie producer who has called his old high school flame, a married housewife, in the hopes of seducing her, she being very much of a no-that-means-yes disposition; and Visitor from Forest Hills is a farce about the quarreling parents of a bride-to-be who has locked herself in the bathroom, with the wedding party downstairs in the ballroom, refusing to come out.
How ‘60s can you get?
And yet: relief comes early. Because Plaza Suite still gets its laughs.
Big time.
And audience approval.
Big time.
Can the retrospective view be that wrong? Is Plaza Suite timeless after all?
Yes and no.
The first thing that the assembled talents do right is to make dead certain, via projecting each play’s subtitle, and the year in which it takes place—a bit arbitrary, this, but they settle on late ‘60s years that fell within the play’s original Broadway run—that the audience understands this is absolutely a period piece, and no foolin’. The second thing they do right is—and oh, I wish wish wish it were almost always thus—they present the script as written, socially-deficient warts and all. The context of era seems to grant the permission to thus proceed.
The third thing they get right is to go for broke.
Director John Benjamin Hickey and his two stars, who portray each play’s couple, real-life marrieds Sara Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, absolutely get this kind of comedy; they know how far to stretch behavior and business without breaking verisimilitude, they get the natural cadence of the lines, they have timing for days. All the good old stuff. Veteran stuff. Stuff you’re born to. Stuff you can’t fake. I could say more about the production, but what’s the point? Neil Simon. Still funny. They pulled it off. Right?
Well…
There’s only one factor you have to make allowances for.
And that’s the timbre of Matthew Broderick’s voice.
It’s why he’s so easily parodied in the likes of Forbidden Broadway, and why his versatility sometimes goes unfairly unrecognized.
You see, he started out as a kid actor…and from his late teen years on, the quality of his voice, or at least the impression it would leave, never much changed. He changed. Kind of. He went from boy to man. Kind of. But the sound of youth has chosen never to abandon him.
And you kind of have to make a pact with that.
In that regard, he reminds me of Ted Bessell, during his tenure in Bernard Slade’s Same Time, Next Year, which was really a two-hander, in which he costarred opposite, first, Loretta Swit and later Sandy Dennis. We’d all known him mostly as Ann Marie’s boyfriend Donald on That Girl. A charming, brilliant light comedian. Pleasant enough voice coming out of your TV speaker. But on stage—for whatever reason: the natural sound of him projecting, bad vocal projection, I know not—his voice was like a throaty honk. It took a few minutes to adjust. Okay, he sounded like a goose, but damn if the goose couldn’t land a joke. Sold American.
In that regard, Broderick also reminds me of Jack Klugman. After the cancer operation that took one of his vocal chords. In the revival of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys, playing opposite Tony Randall, his voice was an amplified gargle. It took a few minutes to adjust. But damn if Klugman still didn’t have the juice. Welcome home to the comeback kid.
Let’s not even discuss Harvey Fierstein.
Of the four, Broderick’s “handicap” is the most benign. He’s not compromised by range, the ability to infect, or the use of his instrument. But that instrument is what it is.
It takes a few minutes to adjust.
I adjusted.
I expect you will too.