THEATER REVIEWS : Stanton’s ‘California Suite’ Is More Like a Motel 6

Old television hand that he is, Neil Simon writes sitcoms; indeed, he is the only playwright still able to sell them in live theater. Whether they’re your cup of tea or not, in the right hands his plays can seem tightly crafted and funny, or at the very least amusing.

But the inept production of his “California Suite” at the Stanton Community Theatre is, under John Craig’s haphazard direction, so clumsily put together that it allows the bare bones of Simon’s writing to show. It’s easy to see how thin and shallow the play really is.

A follow-up to Simon’s “Plaza Suite,” this is, like its older brother, four television-type stories about the various occupants of a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel (which here looks more like Motel 6).

We get a long-divorced mother in town to fetch her teen-age daughter from a visit to her father; a young couple in town for the husband’s nephew’s bar mitzvah; a Brit film star in town with her bisexual husband for the Oscar ceremony; and two couples, best friends, dissolving into chaos after a game on the hotel’s tennis court.

What this prime-time silliness requires is actors and a director who can give the cardboard characters and simplistic writing some depth and detail, rounded characterizations, some semblance of reality and a good dollop of comic style. Without all that, they just don’t work.

Except for Richard June--who plays three of the husbands and who only succeeds by the standard television ploy of playing himself, which he does well--none of the actors goes much beyond reading the lines and making appropriate faces.

Even June, as the British husband, suffers from an accent that sounds more like William F. Buckley’s New England cockney.

Bettie Muellenberg, as the mother and the film star, is as pasteboard as the characters she plays, and has the added problem of an annoying habit: She keeps looking into the audience for reactions. As both the Jewish husband trying to hide a hooker from his wife and as one of the tennis husbands, Paul Walker could be funny under better direction, but he plays at an unrelieved high level that kills most of his laughs.

Even Neil Simon deserves better.

* “California Suite,” Cultural Arts Building, 7800 Katella Ave., Stanton. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Oct. 1. $8. (714) 828-9956. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes. Richard June: William Warren/Sidney Nichols/Mort Hollander Bettie Muellenberg: Hannah Warren/Diana Nichols Paul Walker: Marvin Michaels/Stu Franklin

A Stanton Community Theatre production of Neil Simon’s comedy, directed by John Craig. Scenic design: Elaine Fischbeck, Don Eberle. Stage manager: Elaine Fischbeck.