[For the remainder of the year, my San Jose and Peninsula theater reviews will be posted on Talkin’ Broadway with only introductions to those reviews on this site]. Please continue to https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/regional/sanjose/sj295.html for full review.

1968 was a tumultuous year socially and politically in the United States.  It was also the year of Neil Simon’s Broadway blockbuster Plaza Suite, one of the many successful comedies that the playwright brought to the stage.  Hillbarn Theatre offers up a riotous version full of laughs that will leave the audience in a good mood despite the dark sides that underlie the narratives in the play.

The first tenet of writing fictional literature is to write about what you know.  Neil Simon came from a Jewish family and neighborhood in New York City’s Bronx borough.  Shy, poor, and from an unstable family, he grew up during the Great Depression and World War II, and later, having been married four times also informs his writing.  Despite seeming anomalies for the Peninsula marketplace, Simon is Hillbarn’s most presented playwright, this being its 23^rd production of his works.

Interesting incident-related plots that are hard to expand into full length works present problems to authors and producers.  One solution is to band several together into a compendium with some common thread, though outcomes can be disjointed and uneven.

With Plaza Suite’s three stories, the threads are a suite at the iconic New York hotel and marriage at various stages.  The foundations are very provincial with references special to the New York City environs; the implied Jewish ethnicity; and, all of the characters being from the City or suburbs, even though the action is in a hotel.  In addition, the social mores reflect those of five decades ago, yet the issues and situations prove universal and timeless.  And while the stories are not profound, the Simonesque humor throughout also binds the trio of vignettes together………..

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Plaza Suite, written by Neil Simon and produced by Hillbarn Theatre, appears on its stage at 1285 East Hillsdale Ave., Foster City, CA through September 14, 2025.