MPC THEATRE COMPANY TO PRESENT “PLAZA SUITE”
BOX OFFICE: 831-646-4213 (Weds – Friday 3:00 – 7:00 & 2hrs prior to all performances)
PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MONTEREY - The Monterey Peninsula College Theatre Department presents Neil Simon’s hilarious comedy PLAZA SUITE. Performances are Thursday at 7:00 PM, Friday & Saturday at 8:00 PM, and Sunday at 2:00 PM, May 8 – 18 on the Morgan Stock Stage, on the Monterey Peninsula College campus. MPC is located at 980 Fremont Street, downtown Monterey. PLAZA SUITE is directed by Theatre Department co-chairman Peter DeBono.
PLAZA SUITE marks the eleventh Neil Simon show produced by MPC Theatre Company, including Star Spangled Girl, The Sunshine Boys, The Odd Couple, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, Lost in Yonkers, and the highly popular Eugene Trilogy (Brighton Beach Memoirs in, Biloxi Blues & Broadway Bound). This is sure to be another very enjoyable production featuring the familiar peninsula faces of Gary Bolen, James Brady, Teresa Del Piero, Denise Guarnery, and Jennifer Muniz. Also featured are MPC Drama students, Jeromy Rutter, Brady Shilstone, and Taylor Thorngate.
About Plaza Suite
If only the walls could talk…well, in the Neil Simon comedy PLAZA SUITE they do just that, giving us an inside look at the problems of three different couples, with each story taking place in Suite 719 of New York's Plaza Hotel. First, Sam and Karen Nash (James Brady and Teresa Del Piero) return to their honeymoon suite in an attempt to revive their failing marriage. Then, a movie producer (James Brady) and ladies' man invites his former high school sweetheart (Jennifer Muniz) to Suite 719 on the pretense of catching up on old times. Finally in the most slapstick tale, a blushing bride (Taylor Thorngate) locks herself in the bathroom, while her parents (Gary Bolen and Denise Guarnery) try to persuade her to come out before guests & groom find out she has gotten cold feet. Neil Simon's trademark humor and poignant insight into human relationships comes through clearly in this contemporary theatre classic. The original Broadway production, directed by Mike Nichols, opened on February 14, 1968 at the Plymouth Theatre, where it ran for 1097 performances.
About Peter DeBono
Peter DeBono, Co-Chair of the MPC Drama Department, first came to MPC in 1963 as a student of Morgan Stock’s. He then moved to Los Angeles where he attended UCLA and earned his Masters Degree. He went on to act in movies and on television, until a telephone call came from Morgan and changed his life forever.
"I agreed to come back to Monterey and stand in for Morgan when he took a sabbatical in '71," Peter recalls. "When he returned, he suggested that I stay on for a while. I've been here ever since."
In 1982 he became Chairman of the department, succeeding founding Chairman Morgan Stock. Some of Peter's 146 directing credits include Amadeus, The Miracle Worker, Front Page, The Diary of Anne Frank, as well as Neil Simon’s Laughter on the 23rd Floor, The Odd Couple, and the highly popular Eugene Trilogy at MPC, and both The King and I and I'm Not Rappaport at the Western Stage in Salinas. Most recently he directed last season’s production of I Hate Hamlet. Plaza Suite marks his 147th directorial achievement. In October he will direct Death of a Salesman.
About Neil Simon
Neil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter, and one of the most reliable hit-makers in Broadway history, as well as one of the most performed playwrights in the world. From the mid sixties to the mid Eighties, Simon's name became a synonym for popular and financial success, like Spielberg's later. Though primarily a comic writer, some of his plays, particularly the Eugene Trilogy and The Sunshine Boys, reflect on the 20th century Jewish-American experience.
Simon briefly attended NYU in 1946. Two years later, he quit his job as a mailroom clerk in the Warner Brothers offices in Manhattan to write radio and
