Love and marriage

Marital relations are the central theme in these three plays. A real-life couple put on bravura performances, but an Austen adaptation misses

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I DETECT a certain sourness in some of my colleagues' comments on Plaza Suite at the Savoy. I suspect, however, that they are reacting against the high ticket prices and the traditional nature of an occasion in which both the set and the stars, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, are greeted with instant applause. What has been overlooked is that Neil Simon's three 1968 playlets, all set in the same New York hotel suite, offer a ruefully comic portrait of modern marriage.

In the first play, a wife discovers on her wedding anniversary the reasons why her marriage has hit the rocks. Miss Parker excellently conveys the brittle sadness of the increasingly disillusioned wife and Mr Broderick the hollow bluster of the unreliable husband. Mr Simon also deserves credit for striking the right balance between laughter and pain. When the husband asks his wife how she knew he was cheating on her, she replies: 'You were working three evenings a week and we weren't getting any richer.' That is a good example of how a sharp oneliner can contain a savage truth.