Theatre review: Plaza Suite

Back at the theatre after another unscheduled, Covid-related break of a couple of weeks, and it's to one of the year's first London visits from big US names: Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick are the real-life couple playing three different pairs in Neil Simon's Plaza Suite. Wonder if they'll explore the country while they're here? Probably best to steer clear of Liverpool, that's Cattrall country. And hopefully he won't be driving. Anyway, John Benjamin Hickey directs Simon's portmanteau of stories taking place at the end of the 1960s in the same suite of New York's Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park. For the first couple it's a significant location - if Parker's Karen has got the right room, that is: She and her husband Sam are staying there for the night while their house gets redecorated, but she's decided to surprise him for their anniversary by booking the same suite they stayed in on honeymoon.

Theatre review: Sweet Charity

I started this blog in 2012, which coincided with when Josie Rourke took over the Donald and Margot Warehouse; barring the odd performance that got cancelled, that means I’ve now covered her entire run as Artistic Director as we get to her grand finale. Having had a hit with City of Angels, Rourke returns to Cy Coleman, who provides the music (with book by Neil Simon and lyrics by Dorothy Fields) for Sweet Charity. Anne-Marie Duff plays the titular Charity Hope Valentine, a New York “taxi dancer” – a barely-veiled front for prostitution, except unlike most of the other women Charity doesn’t do anything more than advertised. Nor has she really made the connection between this and the fact that she’s not managed to make any money in her eight years on the job – her tragedy is that she’s just not very bright, which combined with a romantic sensibility that makes her believe in a Hollywood ending means she invariably trusts the wrong men.

Theatre review: Promises, Promises

The description on the website threatens "a triumph of 1960s sexual work-place politics" but also promises Burt Bacharach songs, making Southwark Playhouse's latest musical revival something of a mixed prospect. Bacharach provides the music, Hal David the lyrics and Neil Simon the book for Promises, Promises, the musical adaptation of Billy Wilder film The Apartment. Chuck Baxter (Gabriel Vick) has a junior role in a huge New York insurance firm, but doesn't realise he also has a secret weapon in the form of his tiny apartment, only a couple of blocks away from the office. Numerous married executives are having affairs with young women working at the company, and they talk Chuck into letting them use his apartment for sex, in return for putting in a good word for him at work. He finally gets his promotion when the personnel director Sheldrake (Paul Robinson, not the one from Neighbours) finds out and joins the club.

Theatre review: The Sunshine Boys

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: The performance reviewed is from a little over halfway through the preview period.

Having worked together a few years ago on Equus, Richard Griffiths and director Thea Sharrock reunite in the West End for Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys. For the other half of the titular double act, Danny DeVito plays Willie Clark, and physically at least you can see the two of them as an old-school vaudeville comedy act, so comically mismatched are they in size - it occurred to me at times that you could almost fit an entire DeVito in Griffiths' belly. The elderly Willie lives alone in a small New York apartment, his only regular human contact being weekly visits from his nephew, and terrible agent, Ben (Adam Levy.) When a TV network plans a retrospective on vaudeville, Willie is invited to reunite with his old partner Al Lewis (Griffiths.) The trouble is the two can't stand each other, and haven't spoken in 11 years.