THEATER REVIEW / ‘PLAZA SUITE’ : Rooms With a View : Dinner theater opens in Camarillo with a tried and true Neil Simon comedy to ensure success.

Sandra Faye and Dawn Rene, proprietors of a new dinner theater in Camarillo, are taking no chances--they’re opening with Neil Simon’s sure-fire comedy, “Plaza Suite.”

Each of the three acts is a separate encounter, all taking place in a suite at the ritzy Plaza Hotel in New York City. The first is a bittersweet drama of an unraveling marriage. In the second, a successful Hollywood producer attempts to seduce a girlfriend from long ago in a hometown far, far away (New Jersey, actually).

And in the third act, a long-married couple attempt to persuade their daughter to come out of the bathroom, in which she’s locked herself, and get down to the ballroom, where her wedding is about to start.

In the 1968 Broadway original, all three couples were portrayed by George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton. Here, the producers and director John Hulette have cast three sets of principal actors, with James Arthur Pilkington and Gail James each playing two smaller roles.

Penny Puente and Terry Fishman star in the opening “Visitor from Mamaroneck,” as a couple who--in town while their home is being painted--finally discuss their relationship, which has obviously been in trouble for some time.

It’s a Neil Simon play, so there are more laugh lines in the script than on Puente’s anxiety-ridden face, but the theme is relatively serious, and Puente’s and Fishman’s portrayals are sensitive.

At 45 minutes, the act is a bit long. And, with the air conditioning turned off, the room was getting a little close at last Thursday’s opening. The following two acts are considerably briefer, and much funnier--dessert, so to speak, after the main course.

Jim Seerdan is convincing as Jesse Kiplinger. The producer of several successful films, he hobnobs with the biggest names in Hollywood. Annie Sullivan is delightful as Muriel Tate, the hometown girl who’s enchanted with her old flame’s success.

But just exactly how enchanted is she? How gullible? And how married?

Director Hulette has updated Simon’s script to the present day; this act is where the changes ring least authentic. When Tate notes that one of Kiplinger’s pictures played for an unprecedented two weeks at a Tenafly drive-in, certainly someone could have come up with a more impressive star than Mickey Rourke.

And when she asks Kiplinger, “Is that the way you’d talk to Daryl Hannah?” a more powerful, more current star--Madonna? Sharon Stone? Barbra Streisand?--would have been better.

The final act is a knockabout farce featuring Marjorie A. Berg and Gene Sarro as Norma and Roy Hubley, whose daughter is locked in the bathroom. It’s the funniest and most physical of the three acts. Hulette and his cast keep things going apace and at a consistently amusing level so that the audience leaves with a smile.

The site of the Faye Rene Dinner Theatre, Ottavio’s Banquet Facility, has been used for dinner theater before, and it’s nice to see it back. The meal (fish or chicken on opening night and weekends; pasta on Thursdays) was served buffet-style, with a full cash bar available for those so disposed.

* WHERE AND WHEN

“Plaza Suite” plays through June 20 at Ottavio’s Banquet Facility, 340 N. Mobil Avenue in Camarillo. Doors open Thursday through Saturday nights at 6 p.m.; dinner is served at 7, and the show begins at 8. Tickets are $22.75 Thursdays, $32.75 on Friday and Saturday. For reservations or further information, call 484-9909.