Eclipse's 'Plaza Suite' poignant, unsettling

Neil Simon's plays may lack the razor-sharp wit of a wordsmith like David Ives, but the hit-maker responsible for "Barefoot in the Park," "The Odd Couple" and the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Lost in Yonkers" certainly knows his way around a punchline. And he never makes audiences wait too long for the next joke.

Populist and prolific, Simon delivers the kind of middlebrow comedies whose mass appeal translates to commercial success and frequent revivals. The latest comes courtesy of Eclipse Theatre Company, which revives Simon's 1968 Broadway hit "Plaza Suite" as part of its 10th anniversary commemoration of its one playwright/one season initiative. The company last staged the play in 2003 as part of its Neil Simon season.

A sometimes chilly comic examination of marital discord, "Plaza Suite" centers on a trio of less-than-happily wedded, middle-aged, upper-middle class couples whose precarious unions and strained relationships play out in vignettes that unfold in the same timelessly elegant suite of New York City's Plaza Hotel. But look beyond the wisecracks and you'll find pathos, which director Steve Scott illuminates quite effectively in this sure-handed, well-cast production. Balancing the play's quietly aching moments with some uproarious slapstick, Scott ably negotiates its shifting moods: the poignant, unsettling tone of the first scene depicting the beginning of the end of a marriage; the amusing and awkward tryst between a woman who craves more and a man who wants less and the farcical conclusion involving a couple who want nothing more than for their daughter to go through with the expensive wedding they've given her.

Simon's 'Suite' starts out somberly, with a couple who find themselves at a crossroads on the eve of their 22nd anniversary (23rd depending on which spouse is counting). The expressive Cece Klinger brings a restless energy and earnestness to Karen, a suburban matron with a sense of whimsy and keen intuition, who tries to rekindle the romance with her husband Sam. Klinger keeps Karen's pain close to the surface. And as the lights come down, she conveys with her stricken expression exactly what her unsuccessful interlude with Sam has cost.

Ted Hoerl brings a measured ambivalence and condescension to the role of Sam, a man whose midlife crisis has turned him into a work-obsessed, health nut and sent him into the arms of his secretary. The subtle tension between Hoerl and Klinger suggest a couple who know the end is near. The more lighthearted second sketch concerns a Hollywood producer (played with practiced self-absorption by Nathaniel Swift, whose shaggy, hair, love beads and rose-tinted glasses suggest a young Peter Fonda) trying to seduce his high school sweetheart (the funny, endearingly prudish Frances Wilkerson sporting the classic 1960s "flip"), a star-struck New Jersey housewife more receptive to his proposition than she cares to admit.

The nimbly paced, perfectly executed final scene (the flat-out funniest of the three) features superb comedic performances from Jon Steinhagen (who earns laughs with an arched eyebrow and fixed glare) and Cheri Chenoweth (fluttery nervousness never gets old) as the increasingly anxious and incessantly bickering parents of a skittish bride who has locked herself in the bathroom minutes before her very expensive wedding fearing that she and her fiance will become her parents. Given the bleak picture Simon paints, she has good reason to be afraid.

Rounding out the cast is J.P. Pierson as the accommodating bellhop and the take-charge groom and Nora Fiffer as the accommodating secretary and the reluctant bride.

The sharply observed "Plaza Suite" may conclude with a farce, but it has substance. And if Simon sends his audience home chuckling, it's only after he's demonstrated in no uncertain terms that marriage doesn't guarantee happily ever after.

"Plaza Suite"

Rating: 3 stars

Location: Victory Gardens Greenhouse Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago

Times: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 31

Running time: About two hours, with intermission

Tickets: $20-$30

Parking: $6, accompanied by ticket stub, in the Children's Memorial Hospital parking garage

Box office: (773) 871-3000 or eclipsetheatre.org

Rating: For teens and older

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Video</h2> <ul class="video"> <li><a href="/multimedia/?category=1&type=video&item=184">Clip from Eclipse's 'Plaza Suite' </a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>