BWW Reviews: Simon's PLAZA SUITE Opens Allenberry Season On The Right Note

Neil Simon's PLAZA SUITE first hit Broadway in 1968, well over forty years ago. It's no secret that Simon's plays vary now in their degree of datedness; some, such as THE GOODBYE GIRL, are hard to make fresh even with updated staging, props, and references - they're too set in their ways to make them feel new or original again. Others, like THE ODD COUPLE, can still provoke uncontrollable hysteria with only a fast coat of paint. PLAZA SUITE, even at its finest, isn't knee-slappingly funny - its three scenes increase in raw humor as the show progresses, but watching a marriage on the rocks with a tearful woman begging her husband to leave his secretary in the first sketch isn't the stuff of laughs - but it's well-written and winds up with happy endings. A few updates in the props and time references are all it takes to prove that no matter how times change, human relationships, especially romantic ones, still are the same as they were half a century ago.

Allenberry Artistic Director Ryan Gibbs, who's wisely brought Allenberry back into the Actors Equity fold, has directed a show that has not one air of "college kids on break do summer stock," but qualifies as a serious piece of regional theatre. From cast to costumes to sound to set, and including Gibbs' judicious setting of each of the pieces roughly twenty years later than their original dates, the show works. And so does Simon's dialogue, especially his one-liners. From a distraught wife's "Everybody cheats with their secretary; I expected more from my husband!" to a Hollywood producer's "I don't talk to stars; I have directors to do that," Simon's quips, when delivered properly, can bring down a house, and they've been doing that in this production.

Michael Iannucci, recently of the Broadway revival of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and also of the Fulton's recent and delightful production of AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, plays the male lead in all three sketches. He's fine throughout, but is no doubt at his most hilarious playing the Hollywood producer who's back in New York at the Plaza and trying to seduce his high school girlfriend from New Jersey, who only wants to hear about celebrities he knows. On the other hand, in the last sketch, as father of a recalcitrant bride, he shows off some physical comedy that might not be anticipated. His pantomiming an attempt to walk a seventh-story ledge at the Plaza to break into a bathroom, and his resulting effects, are classic.

Lanene Charters, of Broadway's MAMMA MIA, is great fun to watch, particularly as the former girlfriend who'll just finish her drink and leave, or so she thinks. Her ability to move from elegant middle-aged suburban housewife with a Liz Taylor coif and poise to age-defying (or denying) Jersey girl to harried mother-of-the-bride with a family crisis is dizzying; though the first and third women have much in common, she's quite definitely completely transformed as Muriel, the married-to-someone-else mother who's got a celebrity crush on her high school sweetheart.

Rounding out the cast are two other performers who handle small moments - Erin Whitcomb, who's the secretary/mistress in the first sketch and the barely-seen bride in the third, and Keland Alaka'I Sarno, the hotel bellman in the first two sketches and the groom in the third. It's a shame there's not more of Sarno, who was a hit last season as Ito, the manservant, in Allenberry's MAME. He's always fun to watch.

Unfortunately, this is not the longest-running show of Allenberry's season, and it ends on May 10. Neil Simon fans should catch the production. These aren't mile-a-minute farce laughs - though the second sketch is almost a bedroom farce without doors - but it's very traditional plot-development comedy. It's also worth it for the sheer pleasure of Neil Simon dialogue.

For tickets and information, call 717-258-3211, or visit www.allenberry.com.

Photo Credit: Cindy King