In PPTOPA’s Act III of Plaza Suite Roy (Alan Goodman) barks at her daughter, Mimsey, who has locked herself in a bathroom in the Plaza Hotel before her wedding. Looking on is Roy’s wife and Mimsey’s mother, Norma (Lory Reyes). (Photos by Norman Black)
By Aaron Krause
“Old is no good anymore. It has to be new,” says middle-aged Karen Nash near the top of Neil Simon’s late 1960s hit comedy Plaza Suite. She’s talking about a building near New York City’s Plaza Hotel that was likely torn down due to its age.
But in live theater, age doesn’t mean irrelevance. In fact, we often return to older works for comfort, perspective, laughter, and even to unearth themes and ideas we may have missed during previous viewings. With its wry one-liners, relatable characters, and familiar situations, Plaza Suite still delivers all of that.
The play may be more than sixty years old, but it hasn’t lost its charm. Little about it feels stale or outdated. Pembroke Pines Theatre for the Performing Arts’ (PPTOPA) current professional production breathes new life into Simon’s comedy and makes it feel fresh.
The production, running one more weekend through July 27, stars Alan Goodman and Lory Reyes. They play three very different couples who occupy the same suite at New York’s Plaza Hotel during the late 1960s. Ashley Goehmann, Steven Guez, and Nicholas Palazzo ably handle the supporting roles. Director Jerry Jensen sharpens the humor with crisp timing, impactful pauses, and clear attention to detail. The production runs about two hours and 20 minutes, including two intermissions.
In Plaza Suite, late master comic playwright and screenwriter Simon (1927–2018) makes us ponder topics such as the American Dream, aging and the passage of time, and family relationships and dynamics. But while the play touches on meaningful ideas, it is mostly an escapist piece. It delivers frequent chuckles, if not outright belly laughs, and serves up a slice of nostalgia.
“I usually don’t tip a whole dollar,” Nash says to a hotel employee shortly after she enters her suite. At the reviewed performance, audiences audibly laughed, perhaps fondly recalling a time when everything was not so expensive.
Of course, Simon—one of the most successful, prolific, and widely produced playwrights in theater history—is best known for his humor. But he brought more than laughs to his work. Even in comedies such as Plaza Suite, Simon explored relatable human struggles with wit and insight.
Over time, Simon’s writing grew more emotionally layered. In fact, his 1991 Pulitzer Prize- and Tony-winning play Lost in Yonkers (which recently ran at Palm Beach Dramaworks in an excellent professional production) blends comedy with poignant themes of loss, resilience, and family dysfunction. It marks a shift in Simon’s career toward deeper storytelling—without ever abandoning his sharp comic sensibility.
Simon sets Plaza Suite in Suite 719 of New York City’s famed Plaza Hotel. Over the course of three acts, three unrelated couples check into the suite. Each faces relationship issues that blend humor, tension, and truth. While Simon doesn’t connect the characters narratively, what unites them is tension lurking beneath the surface-level comedy.
In Act I, long-married couple Sam and Karen Nash check into the suite for what Karen hopes will be a romantic getaway. After all, it is their 23rd anniversary. But tensions rise as Sam grows increasingly distant and reveals a secret that will severely test their relationship. Karen struggles to salvage what’s left of their connection.
In Act II, successful Hollywood movie producer Jesse Kiplinger invites his now-married former sweetheart Muriel Tate to the suite. As Jesse turns on the charm, Muriel wavers between polite resistance and old emotional sparks.
In Act III, parents Roy and Norma Hubley find themselves in comic crisis mode. It’s their daughter’s wedding day, but the bride has locked herself in the bathroom and refuses to come out. Chaos—and slapstick—ensue as the frantic parents try to keep the ceremony from falling apart.
In addition to the tension beneath the comedy, another element linking the three acts is a sense of discontent. In the first two acts, characters struggle with dissatisfaction and disappointment in middle age. In contrast, the third act shifts focus to a younger character, the Hubleys’ daughter, Mimsey. She locks herself away rather than face the next stage of life.
In the final act, the Hubleys feel underdeveloped. We learn little about them as individuals, and Roy, in particular, comes across as impulsive, emotionally tone-deaf, and short-tempered. But while we may not be able to relate to the couple, we laugh due, in part, to the low comedy that Simon serves up in the act.
“This is your mother speaking,” Mrs. Hubley tells her daughter in the locked bathroom.
“This is your father again,” Mr. Hubley announces after his wife tries unsuccessfully to reason with Mimsey.
The lines sound awkward and silly—and that’s part of the comedy. But the laughter may also stem from schadenfreude: taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune, especially when we don’t strongly identify with the person suffering.
Still, the act offers flashes of emotional truth. When Mimsey scribbles on toilet paper that she wants to speak to her father, your heart breaks a little—for the mother who’s been quietly sidelined. In the 1971 film version, after Roy enters the bathroom, we hear the door lock again—symbolically shutting Norma out of this intimate father-daughter moment. PPTOPA’s production omits that small but telling sound cue. Including it might have deepened our empathy for Norma’s emotional isolation.
Reyes speaks and moves with urgency as Norma, but she could make bolder acting choices. When the character dramatically claims to be having a heart attack or threatens to faint, Reyes plays it a bit too straight; the urgency is there, but a touch more comic exaggeration would heighten the humor.
Perhaps the first act is the most serious of all three. In it, Simon blends pathos and humor as Karen clings to hope and nostalgia while Sam seems to be drifting emotionally away from his wife. The comedy comes laced with melancholy—a quality Reyes captures with nuance in her Act I performance. In the film, Maureen Stapleton imbued Karen with a cheerful, friendly, and optimistic demeanor opposite Walter Matthau’s serious, tense, and irritable Sam Nash.
In PPTOPA’s production, Reyes is fun-loving and upbeat. However, the convincing melancholy, subdued quality with which she imbues Karen further strengthens her performance.
Reyes makes it clear that Karen hasn’t lost a step in middle age. The performer’s dark-haired Karen nimbly jogs across the hotel room, eager to please her husband in any way that she can. At one point, she even offers him her lipstick to write with when he asks for a pencil—another example of her eagerness to accommodate (try as she might, she couldn’t find a pencil).
Still, a few moments could benefit from sharper choices. For instance, when Karen coyly lies about her age and strikes a seductive pose, Reyes comes off a bit stiff—missing an opportunity to fully inhabit the comedic awkwardness.
Simon never tells us exactly what Sam does for a living, though we gather he works in a corporate setting. As Goodman skillfully portrays him, Sam’s mind is everywhere but the Plaza Hotel celebrating he and his wife’s anniversary. With grey hair, grey beard, and glasses, Goodman’s slightly hunchbacked Sam twists his face into believable expressions of annoyance and overwhelm. Clearly, Goodman’s uptight Sam could use a vacation even if his mind is elsewhere.
While Act One leans into melancholy, the second act focuses on regret, seduction, and self-delusion. Jesse Kiplinger is a successful Hollywood producer, but he aches for something long gone. On the surface, he enjoys all of life’s comforts, yet he lacks that special someone who could enrich his life. Kiplinger’s past three relationships ended unsatisfactorily. Now, he sees a chance to rekindle his romance with former flame Muriel Tate. Of course, Kiplinger ignores the fact that Tate is married with children and that the woman he once courted no longer exists. Tate is like a different person now, living in a different world than the one Kiplinger inhabits. Still, the producer puts on the charm as a mask for his loneliness or insecurity.
A potential trap in portraying Kiplinger is turning him into a stereotypical Hollywood caricature. But while Goodman is charming in the role, he also conveys the producer’s frustration with how his life has turned out. In fact, he shakes with regret at one point, lend
Those of us living today in 2025 have become all too familiar with misogynistic men bullying and trying to take advantage of women. But, to his credit, we never sense that Goodman’s character is anything close to a misogynistic bully. The performer, clad in a red jacket, black shirt, and black pants, lends Kiplinger an aura of flamboyance, stylishness, and seduction without making the character cartoonish.
Meanwhile, Reyes, this time sporting gray hair, deftly captures Tate’s modesty and nervousness. She sits tensely, speaks hesitantly, and believably transforms into a tipsy woman who has had a bit too much to drink. In addition, Reyes nails her character’s inner struggle between maintaining her image as a faithful wife and mother and someone who wants to time travel back to a past fling.
The actors perform on a bright-colored and realistic set by designer John Blessed. The design would be even stronger with a hint of the New York skyline. In addition, including a television among the furnishings would have completed it even further.
Also, behind the scenes, Michael Graham’s mostly realistic lighting serves the production well. Appropriately, the lighting seemed a bit dimmer for the romantic second act. And costume designer Dana Fredebaugh’s clothes are character-appropriate.
Despite Plaza Suite’s age, the play still resonates. And, while not perfect, PPTOPA’s production stays true to Simon’s intent, capturing the piece’s humor and tension and delivering a production that is consistently entertaining.
Plaza Suite through July 27 at Pembroke Pines Theatre of the Performing Arts presented at Susan B. Katz Theater at River of Grass Arts Park, 17195 Sheridan St. in Pembroke Pines.. Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, as well as 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets $35 for adults and $25 for students and senior citizens. Go to https://pptopa.com.
Jesse (Alan Goodman) and Muriel (Lory Reyes) share an intimate moment in Act II
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