Plaza Suite starring SJP & Matthew Broderick - Savoy

In my opinion, whatever you do, do NOT make this decision, to leave at the interval. . .

Instead, if you are the kind of person who leaves at the interval, having little patience for average material, have dinner from 7pm - 8pm, and show up at 8:30pm for the second half, which plays from 8:45pm to 10pm.

The difference between before and after the interval is chalk and cheese, where the first hour is whiny chalk screeching across a wizened blackboard, and the second half is a delicious comic cheese platter to be savoured.

I really enjoyed myself tonight, feeling that the first half was decidedly average, with skilful performances lifting intrinsically poor material, but found the second half was very funny, with skilful performances lifting good material towards excellence.

Some spoilers follow. . .

The three plays presented are essentially three two-handers, one before the interval, and two after. The connection between the plays is that they are all set in the same suite at the Plaza Hotel in the late sixties, and although the plays do not feature the same characters, they all explore the role of communication in middle-aged relationships.

The first play is about a failure of such communication, the second about successful communication, and the third about something in between, as well as about how communication styles might be passed from one generation to the next.

Throughout the evening, Matthew Broderick, who I found to be a sensitive and emotive actor in "The Starry Messenger," at Wyndham's Theatre, just gets funnier and funnier.

In the first play, Broderick gets more comic mileage than Walter Matthau got out of the same material, in the film (which I saw a couple of decades ago, but in which I recall Matthau being unpleasantly and off-puttingly abrasive), by channeling a kind of Wallace Shawn drony drollness, a much more pliant and comic doormat approach of dealing with the wife he can't agree with about anything. Sarah Jessica Parker spends the duration of this first play desperately and tragically trying to penetrate the drone, but as an audience member, I found the most memorable moment of the play was when Parker threw a paper plane across the room for it to land precisely on Broderick's lap. Cue cheers. Despite a couple of laughs, and an effective moment of melancholy, I'd rate the first play 2 and a half stars, raised from a 2 star text by the performances.

After the interval, the second play is an insightful comedy zinger, with both Sarah Jessica Parker and Broderick fizzing comically with desire for each other, after seventeen years of not seeing each other, though they now speak completely different love languages, with Parker desirous only of hearing about her former beau's Hollywood star connections, as he is now a big producer, and he desirous solely for her straightforward simplicity. The way these two love languages play off each other is utterly delightful, and both actors elevate good material into the stratosphere, with Broderick's Wallace Shawn comic whininess now informed by a youthful Woody Allen (before he got a bad rep lol) comic lustiness. For me, this is the best play of the evening, as the play is the match of the performances, and I'd give it 4 and a half stars.

The third play is the broadest comedy of all, about a couple who can't talk their daughter out of a bathroom on her wedding day. Now Broderick fires on more comedy cylinders than ever before, dressed in humorously grotesque grey aging makeup, getting more and more frenetic, a Wallace Shawn crossed with a young Woody Allen crossed with a Basil Fawlty crossed with the aging waiter who stumbled around in "Man with Two Guvnors," a comedy character par excellence. Unfortunately, SJP's straight woman character, albeit well done, gets a bit sidelined by Broderick's bravura comedy performance, so overall the play is not as interesting in what it has to say as the second play, but moment for moment it is the funniest, and I give it 4 stars.

Play 1: 2 stars;
Play 2: 4 and a half stars;
Play 3: 4 stars.

Overall, 3 and a half stars, but taken by itself, AFTER the interval rates a dynamic and winning 4 and a bit stars for me! So, in my opinion, don't miss the second half.