Plaza Suite

Tonight and Saturday are the last two nights you'll get to see Plaza Suite at Boise Little Theater, so please, do yourself a favor and go.

The script consists of three vignettes, all of which take place in the same suite at the Plaza Hotel. Each scene is its own carefully crafted story, and the cast members tell them superbly.

Instead of saving the fireworks for the grand finale, Plaza Suite starts out with them. You can practically smell the sulfurous gunpowder and hear the crackles when Debra Southworth and Jeff Chapman, who play Karen and Sam Nash, clash about the affair Sam is having with his secretary on the day of (or maybe it's the day before) their anniversary, in the very room (or maybe it's the floor below) where they spent their honeymoon. But this is not a predictable argument. Karen is a little too permissive for Sam's taste, and Sam sometimes finds himself trying to goad his wife into excoriating him. At one point during the argument, after half-heartedly (but creatively -- it is Neil Simon) insulting Sam -- at his request -- Karen says, "I take back everything I said. You're a pussycat." Karen seems to recognize that if she makes a big scene, she'll make it easy for Sam to go off to his secretary, and she won't give him the satisfaction. Her refusal to play the game intrigues Sam, who starts to see something in his wife he's never seen before. Southworth and Chapman offer rapid-fire banter and a fascinating dynamic as a long-married couple on the rocks. This is the third time I've seen Southworth onstage, and each time is better than the last. I've never seen Chapman before, but he provided the perfect counterpoint to Southworth; I was not entirely surprised to see his impressive bio.

Next up, Muriel Tate (played by Helene Myers) stops by the hotel to visit her high school sweetheart Jesse Kiplinger (Jeremy Gugino), who grew up to be a famous Hollywood producer while she married another high school beau, raised three children and joined the PTA. I think this is the first time I've actually seen Myers onstage, and I'm glad I had the chance. She was perfect as Muriel, a jumble of raw nerves, descending quickly into the influence of starstruck awe, impetuousness, and far too many vodka stingers. Kiplinger for his part claims he wanted to see Muriel after the disappointments of his failed Hollywood marriages. He says he saw her picture in a newspaper photo of a PTA meeting and realized she was the uncorruptible woman he's been searching for. His claims are somewhat undercut by the amount of time his hand spends on her knee; it's clear he'd like to do some corrupting of his own. Gugino does an excellent job of drawing Muriel in. He and Myers have great chemistry throughout the scene.

In the final scene, Patti O'Hara and Andy Neill, who play Norma and Roy Hubley, try to convince their daughter, who's getting married that day, to come out of the hotel bathroom she's locked herself into. O'Hara, who was excellent when I saw her in Steel Magnolias last year, turns in another great performance, moving easily from strained, barely-held-in-check panic to manic shouts of "Don't you wave your broken arm at me!" to the almost crushing realization that her daughter is afraid of turning into her. I think Neill could have been a little angrier at times. He's a little too soft-spoken when he should be shouting, and it seems hard to believe he could be so angry as to intimidate his wife and back her up against the wall. But he portrays Roy's frustration well, and he has some great facial expressions that really add to some of the scene's moments of physical comedy. The scene has kind of a cheesy ending, but overall it's a nice way to cap off the rest of the evening.

The rest of the cast -- Zach Townsend, Larry Tingler and Allison Berglund -- round out the show nicely.

A few minor criticisms: Southworth and O'Hara both rushed through their phone conversations without providing quite enough time for the person on the other end of the line to respond. I recognize that watching someone listen to the other end of a phone conversation does not make for dynamic theater, but without the pauses the play loses some realism. I also found myself easily distracted by Southworth's semi-translucent gray rubber booties (those are galoshes? I picture the big knee-high black things) and the fact that Gugino's shoes, a topic of conversation at one point, didn't appear to be made of particularly nice leather (the two flaws in an otherwise well costumed show -- I coveted some of those dresses). But sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm a little borderline OCD about things like that (for instance, Chapman's sportcoat collar got partially turned up during the middle of the scene and I could not stop staring at it).