A ‘Suite’ Tribute

September 7, 2018

Director enjoying masterful comedy of Neil Simon

LARA JO HIGHTOWER

lhightower@nwadg.com

When Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning playwright Neil Simon’s death was announced on Aug. 26, there was no shortage of tributes. The New York Times said Simon “helped redefine popular American humor with an emphasis on the frictions of urban living and the agonizing conflicts of family intimacy,” while The Guardian noted that “a standard Broadway joke had it that only William Shakespeare wrote more hit plays.”

Noted Northwest Arkansas actor and director Julie Gabel echoes this admiration: She has the bittersweet job of directing Simon’s “Plaza Suite,” which will open at Arts Center of the Ozarks mere weeks after the playwright’s death.

“There’s something about Neil Simon,” says Gabel, who notes that this will be the first time she’s directed a Simon play, though she’s performed in several in the past. “It’s such a stylized kind of comedy. He’s such a great writer, and he approaches the comedy in his characters in different ways: They’re not just hilarious; they’re not all sarcastic. He has so many points of view of comedy in his plays, and that’s so appealing.”

“Plaza Suite” has three, unrelated acts, all set in the same luxurious suite of New York’s Plaza Hotel. Each act features only two characters, allowing a sharp focus on the relationships between the couples. In Clive Barnes’ New York Times review of the original 1968 Broadway production, he called it a “laugh machine” that “evokes laughter in plenty” and “ends with an all-stops-out, grandstand finish.”

“It’s such well-written dialogue, especially between the married couples,” says Gabel. “How they interact and say something without actually saying it — and the building of a moment, the phrasing of a conversation … it’s so well-written. And then there’s the capper of a punchline that finishes the phrase. He really knew how to capture the personality of these people.” Gabel points out that, in this particular show especially, Simon displays his skill at portraying realistic, sometimes fraught, relationships in a masterfully comic fashion. “He’s talking about relationships, and whether it’s his own or just something he learned along the way, he’s so good at it. I keep finding new things in the script — it’s got so many layers.”

Speaking of married couples, Gabel will be directing her husband, Mike Thomas, in the show. Gabel and Thomas are used to sharing a stage together: They’ve acted in numerous plays and films together and appear regularly in performances with their improvisational comedy group, Phunbags. But it’s been about five years since they’ve had a director-actor relationship.

“When you direct, especially when you direct people you don’t know, you’ve got to figure out how they work, how best to approach them, and what helps them create that character,” says Gabel. “With Mike, I already know how he works. One of the best things to do with Mike is to leave him alone, because he is so creative as an actor, and I don’t want to squelch that creativity. Where some actors may need a lot of guidance finding their characters, Mike will usually find it in more clever of a way than I could do. Then I help him shape that character and how it relates to the rest of the play and other relationships in the play.

“We’ve been doing this so long that it just works for us. Maybe not every day but most days.”

Gabel also has quite a history with ACO: She first performed with the theater around 1980, when she was in its production of “Oklahoma.”

“It was when they did summer theater outside,” she says. “We didn’t really think about how hot it was. It was super fun.”

NWA Democrat-Gazette/J.T. WAMPLER Rochelle Renteria as Muriel Tate and Michael Weir as Jesse Kiplinger in the Arts Center of the Ozarks’ production of Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite”. Photo taken on August 28, 2018.