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As Sarah Jessica Parker lifts a slinky black nightdress from a suitcase and lays it, longingly, on the hotel bed, a murmur of anticipation runs around the audience. This is, after all, Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw, albeit playing Karen, a 1960s housewife set on rebooting her marriage.
But both she — and the audience — are destined for disappointment. For Karen has opted to celebrate her wedding anniversary in suite 719 of Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel: a room where marriages, in Neil Simon’s 1968 triptych of short comic scenarios, come to wither and die on the plushly carpeted floor.
When Sam turns up (played by Parker’s real-life husband Matthew Broderick), he’s far too preoccupied by his work, his weight and the whiteness of his teeth to notice Karen’s efforts at seduction. “I didn’t think you’d need your pyjamas,” she says, hopefully. “I can’t sleep without my pyjamas,” he retorts, before returning to study his profile in one of the room’s gilded mirrors (John Lee Beatty’s set is a masterpiece of reassuring yet deadly opulence). The arrival of his secretary, who drinks black coffee with sweetener while Karen works her way steadily through the hors d’oeuvres, tells us all we need to know.
Sam and Karen are the first of three couples to occupy the room, each in turn brought face to face with disillusion. Act two sees a bloated Hollywood producer and a bored New Jersey housewife attempting an awkward tryst with their past as childhood sweethearts, while the third act moves into frantic farce, as a middle-aged pair attempt to persuade their daughter to come out of the bathroom and attend her own (expensive) wedding several floors below.
The main draw of John Benjamin Hickey’s production is the evident bond between Parker and Broderick as they play out multiple variations of marital misery. Parker, in particular, is a joy, bringing zest, precise detail and sharp comic timing to her characters. But it’s not quite enough to blow the dust off the play and its creakily dated depiction of the sexes. More than 50 years on, the comedy has aged; each act, though short, feels overextended, while the scenes never really explore the loneliness and pain that can lurk beneath the comedy.
That’s despite the work of Parker, who finds some depth in Simon’s flimsy female characters. In act one, she brings increasing levels of desperation to Karen’s sparkiness and smart one-liners until she becomes quite desolate at the end. Broderick has less fortune, playing a stuffed shirt, a stuffed ego and plain stuffy, and delivering them all stiffly — though act three does allow both actors to let loose with some broad physical comedy.
The toughest section to animate is the second. Although Parker gives her character a firm edge beneath the ditsy exterior, it’s hard to laugh at the queasy spectacle of a film producer and a woman in a hotel bedroom. It’s Neil Simon: there are zingers and classic bits of funny business. But old is not always gold.
★★★☆☆
To April 13, plazasuiteuk.com
