“Adorable!” The word rang throughout the theater during this old comedy chestnut, mainly for leading lady Sarah Jessica Parker, who, even through the most dire scenes, is perky and..well, adorable. Her real-life husband, Matthew Broderick, not so much. But he’s won two Tonys and has a great theater following, so his low-energy persona apparently works well for him.
The show is actually three separate plays, with Parker and Broderick playing a married couple in each. The scene throughout takes place at the Plaza Hotel, room 719, 1968-69. The audience roars at the awkwardness of the characters in all three sections, but the bottom line is that none of these couples is joyously happy with each other, or even particularly comfortable. Was this Neil Simon’s view of long-married people? Pretty grim. And when you get right down to it, no middle-aged man in his right mind would dump SJP for a rather ordinary secretary.
So why do people laugh? There’s a lot of physical comedy. Broderick goes out of a window to try to reach his daughter in the bathroom. There’s a lot of shtick: Is it the right date, the right room, will they or won’t they get anchovies with the hors d’oeuvres, and where is he, anyway?
Plaza Suite has lasted as long as it has because people identify with the marital shenanigans they see on stage, here played with all the charm possible by Parker and Broderick. But honestly, if you think the characters in this play behave in a normal fashion or speak to each other as they do here, the advice from this long-married reviewer is to get couple’s counseling.
