This week, Jared Bowen sits down with Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker to discuss the couple’s starring roles in “Plaza Suite” at the Emerson Colonial Theater. Plus, reviews of two new plays: “Sweat” and “Vanity Fair.”
Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker discuss “Plaza Suite,” presented at the Emerson Colonial Theatre through February 22
Before “Plaza Suite” began its pre-Broadway run in Boston, Jared sat down with the show’s stars Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker for a conversation about the production.
Both Parker and Broderick expressed admiration for playwright Neil Simon, who wrote this suite of plays centering around three couples’ who’ve checked in to New York City’s famed Plaza Hotel.
“[Neil Simon] seemed to enjoy writing about relationships,” says Parker. “I think he was very interested in why things work and why they don’t.”
The couple also expressed happiness to work together onstage for the first time in more than 20 years.
“I do miss being able to go home and complain about work,” quipped Broderick. “Now I can’t… that’s already happened when we get home.”
While the couple is delighted to perform together on-stage, Broderick says he hasn’t tapped into their real-life marriage.
“I usually do relate it to something,” says Broderick, “but if we thought we were exploring our own relationship in front of an audience or strangers, that would be very uncomfortable.”
“Sweat,” presented by the Huntington Theatre Company through March 1
The American dream collapses in the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Sweat” presented by Huntington Theatre Company.
Directed by Kimberly Senior, the play is set in the bar of blue-collar Reading, Pennsylvania, where the one factory that has kept almost everyone gainfully employed for generations is no longer, in the age of NAFTA, a reliable job source. Friendships fray as the characters respond to the pressures of their economic insecurity.
Written by Lynn Nottage, Sweat is the result of the playwright’s actual interviews with residents of Reading, Pennsylvania over a two-year period.
“Sweat is brilliant and important,” says Jared, “a visceral examination of what a lot of the country faces, and the consequences realized when the American way delivers its travelers off a cliff.”
“Vanity Fair,” presented by Underground Railway Theater at Central Square Theater through February 23
William Makepeace Thackeray’s 19th century novel “Vanity Fair” is creatively reimagined for the contemporary stage at Central Square Theater.
Adapted by Kate Hamill, the play focuses on two women — the poor Becky Sharp and her well-to-do friend Amelia Sedley. While Amelia is naive and virtuous, Becky is determined to climb her way up the social ladder by any means necessary.
Knowing that the only way to secure their futures in 19th century England is to marry well, these heroines enter in to a series of disastrous relationships with boorish and unworthy men as they navigate the social politics of their world.
Jared says “this ‘Vanity Fair’ shows us the insidious wobble of a man’s world — in all its perversity.”
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