68 THENEWYORKER,APRIL11, 2022
THETHEATRE
HUSBANDS AND WIVES
Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick star in Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite.”
BY VINSON CUNNINGHAM
ILLUSTRATION BY KRISTINA TZEKOVA
dough.) Two weeks ago, I caught
“House of Gucci”—a rococo carnival
of a movie—and it soothed me like a
Saturday-morning cartoon.
I’m not the only one, it seems. Our
city recently elected a Fun Mayor, Eric
Adams, whose most urgent appeal is
for New Yorkers to loosen up, get out-
side, and turn that frown upside down.
His promises to bring “swagger” (one
of his watchwords) back to New York
may be vapid, but their emotional
power is real, rooted in a cunning com-
mingling of place, nostalgia, and gen-
erational self-pity—a sense that, if
only history hadn’t happened, we’d be
carrying on like those older, happierNew Yorkers on TV and in the movies.
So perhaps it’s good timing for the
new Broadway production of Neil Si-
mon’s “Plaza Suite,” a trio of one-act
plays, directed by John Benjamin
Hickey, at the Hudson Theatre. The
recently renovated Hudson, hand-
some in turquoise and glittering green,
is redolent of a grander and more el-
egant New York, and so is the Plaza
Hotel, where each of the one-acts
takes place. They’re all set in Room 719,
where the crown molding is sharp,
the wood trimmings shine, and the
gold patina on the curtains shimmers
gently. The production has its prob-
lems: it’s big, broad, silly, sometimes
dated, often emotionally obtuse. But
something about Simon’s charming
insistence on the two-sidedness of
life—on an inexplicable lightness
that abides even as stunted adults
wade through the dark corners of ro-
mantic relationships, blithely incur-
ring a fallout that they can’t control
and barely notice, until it’s too late—
matches my mood.
Each play is essentially a two-hander,
with brief appearances from hotel wait-
staff and other secondary characters.
Each couple is played by the real-life
spouses Sarah Jessica Parker and Mat-
thew Broderick, whose personas—
together and as individuals—hover
over Simon’s text and add new mean-
ing to it. In the first one-act, “Visitor
from Mamaroneck,” Parker and Brod-
erick are Karen and Sam, an aging mar-
ried couple staying at the Plaza for
their anniversary—although they argue
about the day and the year of their
wedding—and failing the basic test of
mutual kindness.
Karen strains futilely to bring en-
chantment back to the marriage, in
part by trying—like Mayor Adams—
to bring enchantment back to New
York itself. But the city won’t coöp-
erate. The Savoy-Plaza has been razed,
and the old view of that grand hotel
has been replaced by the big, graphic
stripes of the General Motors build-
ing. “I guarantee you Central Park
comes down in five years,” Karen says
to the bellhop (Eric Wiegand) who’s
helped her up to the room. “Five years
from now, you’ll look out this window,
and you’ll see one little tree and the
The personas of the celebrity actors hover over Simon’s text, adding new meaning. world’s largest A. & P.”
T
hese past few years have changed
my taste, and not just in theatre.
The sensory deprivations of social dis-
tance and the funk of onrushing bad
news have made me deeply hungry for
fun. I’ve never believed in a zero-sum
struggle between entertainment and
serious art, but lately entertainment
has been winning the day. In the morn-
ing, I spring for the Post and the Daily
News, with their lurid excitement and
unambivalent staccato sentences, be-
fore turning to the Times. I watch
TV singing competitions in hyper-
saturated color and laugh like a kid.
(Have you seen “The Masked Singer”?
It rots your molars like a plate of fried