“Plaza Suite” practically demands to be played straight. Neil Simon’s look at three romantic couples facing down the passage of time is sharp and knowing, but it is, crucially, earnest. Each charac…
— the two contemporary stars perhaps most apt for an exercise in squareness. To call their work in the new Broadway revival of “Plaza Suite” at the Hudson Theatre “diligent” is to suggest a leaden night out. But the real-life married couple bring a serious commitment to the spirit of the work, allowing their own personas to throw some metatextual sparks without overtaking the spirit of Simon.
In the first part, Parker’s Karen is attempting to celebrate an anniversary with her increasingly distant husband Sam , having made a special effort to book the suite in which the pair spent their honeymoon. The pair go on to play Muriel, a suburban housewife who’s starry-eyed over the success of her old boyfriend Jesse, now a movie producer, as well as Norma and Roy, a married couple attempting to salvage their daughter’s wedding day even as she won’t cooperate.
And even as he sends his stars to emotional extremes, Hickey keeps them grounded in the characters’ reality. Broderick, for instance, in both marriage-themed sections plays characters who struggle to express their emotions, or even to understand them; one never senses Broderick’s own innate intelligence as a performer getting him ahead of where his character is meant to be.
In the show’s two vignettes about married couples, though, the comedy tends to emanate from the ways husbands and wives speak to each other, then and now. The thrill we get from the particular husband and particular wife being these two performers helps buoy moments when the misunderstandings can feel rote, or the scaffolding of the first and third act’s arguments, building to one big reveal, can feel too visible.
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