When it comes to modern romance, Sarah Jessica Parker has been there, done that.
Which is perhaps the logic behind her and husband Matthew Broderick tackling ‘Plaza Suite’, a 1968 triptych of Neil Simon shorts that concern the altogether starchier romantic tribulations of Carrie Bradshaw’s grandparents’ generation.
Playing three very different sets of couples who check into the titular suite 719 over a period of months, it lets the duo flex their acting muscles. But ‘Plaza Suite’ is simply not a very good play, and while I think it would have come across better if a more modern sensibility had been applied to the comedy, that’s not what we get with John Benjamin Hickey’s fusty, stilted production.
In first playlet ‘Visitor from Mamaroneck’, Broderick is Sam, a workaholic husband who has been dragged out to the suite by his wife Karen (Parker) on the occasion of their twenty-fourth wedding anniversary. She bounces around the faded but fancy suite like a bored puppy. He cracks on with his work, frets about his weight, and generally rebuffs her attempts to have a nice time. It has something to it – a portrait of a couple who’ve lost their way without really knowing how – but it feels emotionally underpowered, not funny enough to be comedy, not sad enough to be tragedy.
Parker gives it a good go, but she doesn’t have much to work with – Karen is so emotionally restrained as to barely seem troubled by her collapsing marriage. Broderick, meanwhile, is doing a Gregory Peck-type thing with his voice that does feel period-authentic but seems to have come at the cost of expressing any real feeling.
The middle section (‘Visitor from Hollywood’) casts Broderick as Jesse, a hip LA film producer – he’s basically dressed as Austin Powers – in New York for a few days on business. He’s from New Jersey and has invited his highschool sweetheart Muriel (Parker, obvs) to visit him in the suite. They’re both clearly unhappy in their lives, him lonely in Hollywood, her lonely as a housewife, both thinking about what could have been. Again, there’s something in this as a premise, and again it’s let down by dialogue that suggests Simon never met an actual woman. In particular I did genuinely wonder if Muriel was going to murder Jesse, but her obsessive interest in his life, constant distortion of the truth, and refusal to remove a skintight pair of gloves is weirdly spun as charming.
The last sequence (‘Visitor from Forest Hills’) is the funniest and lightest, as the pair play the mother and father of a bride-to-be, who has barricaded herself in their bathroom. Again it feels like a decent premise let down by lumpen writing and low-level misogyny, but there’s some solid physical business and it’s definitely the most overtly fun sequence.
I’ve moaned, but it’s an unusual prospect, a comedy that would almost certainly never have been revived were it not for the attachment of the two leads. Parker’s presence (her West End debut) is basically a license to print money – the top-priced tickets are over £300 – but I don’t think this is a cynical choice of play. Indeed, they could have made life a lot easier for themselves with material that’s easier to sell. But they really give it a go. Broderick labours some of his parts, but he’s always trying to do something interesting. Parker, meanwhile, may not be the actress to find depth in this script, but she has an effervescent lightness of touch that leavens the stodginess of the writing - she is always watchable and winsome, even playing the creepy Muriel. Plus yes, her outfits are great (for the first two acts, though even her lurid mother-of-the-bride get-up has a certain deranged panache).
If you don’t know or care who Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick are and aren’t some sort of crazed Neil Simon completist, then there’s definitely no reason you need to see ‘Plaza Suite’. If you’ve come for the leads – well, they put on a show for you. Maybe it would have been nice if it was a different show. But nobody’s going into this expecting it to pack the punch of ‘Hamlet’. If you’ve essentially checked into ‘Plaza Suite’ to spend two-and-half-hours with Sarah Jessica Parker, you’re unlikely to be complaining to the manager.