Odd Couple (female version)
by Neil Simon
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Odd Couple (female version) by Neil Simon
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PREVIEW For their autumn production at The Harlequin Theatre, The RATS (Reigate Amateur Theatrical Society) are presenting the well-known Neil Simon comedy, The Odd Couple. Originally made famous by the Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon movie, and followed by the 1970's TV show starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall, Neil Simon's female update of this classic story is wildly funny! In her New York flat, Olive Madison is a contented slob, but it becomes impossible to maintain sanity when her fussy, neurotic friend, Florence Unger, moves in after a split with her husband. The friendship is tested to its limits as the lazy, stuck in her ways Olive tries to survive Florence's histrionics and endless tidying up, during raucous nights in with their group of female friends and a farcical date with the Spanish brothers upstairs. The Odd Couple runds at The Harlequin Theatre from Thursday October 27 to Saturday October 29 at 8pm. Ticket prices are £9.50 (concessions £8.50) and they are available from the box office on 01737 765547. |
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Reviewed by Tony Flook Twenty years after Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, about a pair of mis-matched men first hit the stage, the writer gave the story a new twist by putting two women at the centre of the action. The plot's much the same and it's surprising how well this transposition works, with one annoyingly slobbish and one irritatingly house-proud female reluctantly sharing an apartment. RATS gave a generally entertaining production of this novel version under Alex Gear's direction. Tim Sinclair's set design immediately gave plenty of hints as to why Olive's husband divorced her. She lives in unashamed squalor and seems to take a perverse pride in her mess-strewn home. The pictures hanging at a drunken angle may have overstated the case but it helped to establish Olive's character at a glance. It was an excellent idea to hang drapes at the front of the stage to restrict the height and width so that the location looked like a large room rather than a warehouse, which it could so easily have done. Jan Sparkes's interpretation of Olive, with her comfortably scruffy clothes and slouching walk, made her an understandable, even likeable person. She had no pretensions and enjoyed her easy-going life with friends who took her as she was. It was a big mistake to invite Florence to stay after she's walked out on her husband. Trish Richings, with her accurately-observed, compulsive tidiness compounded by hypochondria, would have driven most people to drink. The inevitable clash, which had been bubbling away almost from the start, come when they invited their neighbours for the evening. Oliver Cownden and David Ilett injected impetus as the gentlemanly Spanish brothers who live upstairs. Their stylised mannerisms, often executed in perfect unison, and fractured but never overdone accents brought an ideal balance to the production. Olive and Florence's four female friends were played with mixed success. Sam Jamieson brought some neat touches to the dizzy Vera and Cheryl Pearce showed Mickey as a no-nonsense, slightly hard-boiled cop. Some of the dialogue in the scenes where the group met to play Trivial Pursuit was indistinct; overall, the actors' delivery in these episodes did not allow for the size of the auditorium and tended to be too fast and under-projected. The score, written by Neal Hefti, was a neat reminder of the original. I may have gone to The Harlequin wondering whether the female version would be a pale reflection of the original show - I left having enjoyed a play that stood up well in its own right.
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