The Odd Couple

The Odd Couple is as sharp, insightful and humorous as when it first lit up Broadway and sparkles with this excellent cast.

The play opens in the living room of a fancy fashionable eight-room apartment in New York City, that is incongruously in a state of disorder for a poker game hosted by slothful sports journalist Oscar Madison (Shane Jacobson). The wise cracking players fire off each other, with one observing that the milk is standing in Madison’s fridge without a bottle.

Disrupting their game is the entrance of neat freak Felix Unger (Todd McKenney) freshly thrown out by his wife, and suicidal because he is “nothing without his family”.

Madison heartfully and humorously draws him back from the brink, invites him to move in explaining that his friend is “one of a kind”.

Todd McKenney is a natural fit for Ungar, who confesses that he was toilet trained at five months, is fastidious with money, and cooked himself out of his marriage. This is his best acting performance in years – with nuance and panache. McKenney’s hypochondria and fastidious cleaning was beautifully choreographed. In one scene he danced across the stage dusting up a storm.

Jacobson looks every inch the part of Madison, milking every gag and keeping the pace fast.  Perhaps the only time he didn’t quite hit the mark was when his character got angry.  Is Jacobson just too nice to be nasty?

The two had a natural on-stage chemistry underpinned by their off-stage friendship.

Unlike Hairspray the Musical, when there was ad-libbing in their duet, the pair stuck strictly to the script. There was just a nod to the speculation about Ungar’s sexuality, in a scene when Madison was called on to help with a remedial massage.

The highlight of the night was the entrance and interaction between the divorcees and their lightweight neighbours the Pigeon sisters - who are invited into the apartment for dinner.

Lucy Durack (Cecily) and Penny McNamee (Gwendolyn) were a scream. They flapped, twittered, and exclaimed in perfect harmony. The disastrous double dinner date which descends into a farce was beautifully acted and directed.

The Odd Couple is set in 1960’s but you soon forget that is a period piece until reminders come, such a newspaper being 10 cents.

Neil Simon’s tight writing, comedy and insights into relationships stand the test of time.

David Spicer

Photographer: Pia Johnson.