NEIL SIMON’S HOTEL SUITE
Gramercy Theatre, 127 E. 23rd St.
LIKE “Noel Coward’s Suite in Two Keys,” staged last season, “Neil Simon’s Hotel Suite” is a reshuffling of earlier material.
Simon’s is a four-act compilation of his three hotel-set plays – “California Suite,” “London Suite,” and “Plaza Suite.”
Unlike Coward, though, Simon is around to work on the plays and make a shapely evening of them.
Two acts, the first and third, now concentrate on the English actress Diana and her husband, Sidney; the second and fourth on Marvin and Millie, a married couple from New York.
The “English” couple (Helen Carey and Leigh Lawson) is exceptionally good under John Tillinger’s shrewd, simple direction.
Diana, an actress played by Carey, is in Los Angeles because she’s nominated for an Oscar. She’s with her antiques-dealer husband, Sidney, played by Leigh Lawson, who brings off Sidney’s exasperated affection for Diana.
Sidney has left acting to go into antiques and has pretty much left women for men. He still loves Diana, but manages to pursue his own sideline between spells of her. Carey’s Diana is a nervous, anxious type ready for the consolations of drink and sex when she loses the Oscar.
Carey is more pleasant than Maggie Smith (in the film of “California Suite”); she plays a woman less desperate, less willing to turn unpleasant. At the same time Carey is very funny. In the second confrontation between Diana and Stanley, Diana is in a London hotel some years later on a tour for a successful Hollywood TV series. She is to have a quick meeting with her ex-, Sidney, who now lives in Greece with his Swiss lover.
She’s a bit subdued with age. He is, it develops, consumed by a health crisis in the life of someone close to him. The old love of Diana rises to cope with the present situation.
“We’re not disgusting,” she insists, “we’re actually normal in today’s world.”
This, the droll and debonair English pair, might be seen as Simon’s tribute to Coward.
No such chance with the other pair. First, Marvin fruitlessly tries to dispose of a passed-out, drunken hooker before his wife’s arrival; later, the same married pair try to cope with their daughter’s panic on her wedding day.
It is comedy of physical befuddlement. Walter Matthau, the great American farceur, lingers in the memory as the husband. His part is here played by Ron Orbach, whose frantic coping is funny but lacks the calm irrationality of Matthau. (Simon is plagued by classic performances.)
The distraught wife is Randy Graff, a competent if uninspired actress. These plays are merely OK and here serve as a letdown from the elegant, articulate emotions of the introductory works.
All told, though, a highly pleasant summer evening.