Plaza Suite

Plaza Suite (1968), three one‐act plays by Neil Simon. [Plymouth Theatre, 1,097 perf.] In “Visitor from Mamaroneck,” the first of three playlets set in a lavish suite at Manhattan's Plaza Hotel, suburbanites Karen ( Maureen Stapleton) and Sam Nash ( George C. Scott) take the same suite at the Plaza that they had on their honeymoon twenty‐four years before. But Karen discovers that Sam's secretary is his mistress, and when he leaves for a rendezvous with the girl, she is left alone with a bottle of champagne and two glasses. “Visitor from Hollywood” concerns the efforts of movie producer Jesse Kiplinger (Scott) to seduce Muriel Tate (Stapleton), his old high school sweetheart. The farcical “Visitor from Forest Hills” deals with the frantic attempts by Roy (Scott) and Norma Hubley (Stapleton) to coerce their daughter, Mimsey ( Claudette Nevis), out of the locked bathroom minutes before her wedding ceremony. The plays prompted Otis L. Guernsey Jr. to write of Simon, “He is the Molière of the high‐rise era; he knows his contemporaries intimately and he treats them affectionately, but never too gently.” The successful triplet comedy prompted Simon to write the sequels California Suite (1976), London Suite (1995), and Hotel Suite (2000), none of which were as accomplished or as popular.