Neil Simon’s California Suite, a play in four scenes, offers comments on relationships with very contemporary and relatable themes of bitterness, infidelity and loss that accompany modern-day relationships. Although originally written in the 1970s – 1976 to be exact, MADC have elevated this play to contemporary times and made the jokes more relatable in many instances.
All four scenes in the play take place in the same suite, number 203-204, at an unnamed hotel in California. Even taking these restrictions into consideration, the staging of the play left much to be desired. At first glance, the stage bared closer resemblance to your parents’ bedroom back home, than a space you pay to live in.
We are all well-acquainted with hotel rooms, which tend to look the same wherever you go; however, this one could have done with a little bit more colour and contemporary décor, especially since it represented a hotel suite – and an expensive one for that – right in the heart of Los Angeles and Beverley Hills.
Oh if the walls could talk inside this suite! What unfolds from beginning to end of the show are tales of four couples coming from different parts of the US and whose stories of regret, adultery, and dying love between friends and lovers were played out by the ensemble cast.
It places the audience in a voyeuristic position where we feel like we are spying on these couples. We desperately want to look away when things start going south, but we just can’t.
Maria Pia Meli and Stefan Cachia Zammit opened the show with Visitor from New York, playing divorced couple Hannah and William Warren who spend the scene squabbling about their teenage daughter, and who out of the two should keep her.
Edward Caruana Galizia as Marvin Michaels and Christine Borg as Millie Michaels played husband and wife in Visitor from Philadelphia, where we follow the hilarious yet cutting story of a middle-aged business man who wakes up in a debauched state to a call-girl, Bunny, played by a very still Nicole Galea, blissfully passed out by his side. We see him scurry, lie, and beg for his wife to forgive this seemingly uncharacteristic indiscretion.
Taryn Cefai Mamo and Jovan Pisani were up next in Visitors from London, where we see Diana Nichols and her husband Sidney battle with bad hairdos, wardrobe malfunctions and a relationship falling apart over a secret they must keep well-hidden from the public eye as they make their way to the Oscars, where Diana is a first-time nominee.
And lastly, in Visitors from Chicago, we witness a farcical scene where two couples, Edward Caruana Galizia and Christine Borg as Mort and Beth Hollander, alongside Jovan Pisani and Taryn Cefai Mamo as Stu and Gert Franklyn, find themselves on an ill-fated holiday where they fall-out over a tennis accident.
Each actor in the show deserves praise. However, Edward Caruana Galizia as Marvin Michaels and Taryn Mamo Cefai as Diane Nichols gave noteworthy performances which translated well in comedic timing and the situation that their characters were in. Caruana Galizia brilliantly played Marvin Michaels through a range of emotions of panic and regret he felt immediately as he realises what had happened. The audience were laughing from the very first “Oh God, never again…” throughout the whole scene.
Mamo Cefai’s Diana Nichols, a British actress who is attending the Oscars as a first-time nominee, went through the motions of loving, hating, abhorring and just plain feeling indifferent about how she looks and feels. Once again, the audience were in stitches but were held in place by the story of this successful woman who has everything, but so happens to be in love with a man who she can never really own.
Directors Justin Kyle Camilleri and Joe Depasquale put together a cast which were true to Simon’s wit, scathing one-liners and comments on the human conditions, and the flawed human characters playing out the situations on stage.
Although overall acting throughout the show was spot-on and well-directed, some scenes may have felt over-acted, and certain accents were a little forced at times. The last scene especially felt scattered and chaotic, and gave the feeling as though the four actors on stage were trying to deliver their lines with great difficulty to be heard on top of all the other cacophonous sounds going on on stage. This could be due to the lack of space on stage and the crowded décor.
The show managed to keep everyone hooked and waiting for what happened next, and brought to its audience damaged, broken, real characters with relatable qualities that anybody in the audience could relate to. Moreover, in the intimacy of the MADC Clubrooms, the performances felt familiar and swung the audience from emotion to emotion flawlessly as we watched these small worlds fall apart from a close distance.