The Odd Couple (Female Version)

Neil Simon’s original odd couple - mismatched flat-mates Felix and Oscar, along with their poker playing pals - are very familiar, thanks to the hit play, and the subsequent film and TV series (just revived locally this year). Their female counterparts Olive and Florence, and their Trivial Pursuit circle, not so much, yet Simon’s gender-flipped adaptation of his own play is very different, and possibly more poignant.

There’s a darkness to this comedy as a friendship implodes.

It's the regular Trivial Pursuit night in Olive’s apartment, where a delightful rapport and banter between Olive (Maria Micallef) and her friends Vera (Rachel Cutting), Mickey (Debbie Kearns), Renee (Peggy Leto) and Sylvie (Donna Randall) opens the action. The cast create a terrific, credible dynamic within this friendship group with their very different, engaging portrayals. It’s a lovely chemistry.

Set design which establishes a credible, somewhat basic apartment (David Pointon), with costumes which delineate the characters very effectively throughout (design and co-ordination by Leone Sharp, and production by Nicola Barry) make the production visually convincing. Inobtrusive sound and lighting design and operation do their job splendidly throughout.

A phone call from Olive’s ex, wanting to borrow a tidy sum, reveals him as needy, softening Olive’s edges for us as she is incrementally talked into helping him out. A second phone call, from Florence’s concerned husband, reveals that their absent friend has just ended her marriage – via telegram.

Florence (Christiane Brawley) arrives, distraught, and the drama of this comedy is initiated, as Olive compassionately invites her friend to stay. Best intentions … bad mistake.

While Oscar in the original male version of The Odd Couple is genuinely slovenly, director Lyn Lee and actor Maria Micallef have crafted Olive as easy-going and just a bit messy, mostly about shedding her business clothes where they fall across her apartment, to change into casual gear.

By contrast, Christiane Brawley’s Florence becomes a gratingly fastidious, obsessive and frustrated neat freak, even though there’s a clear subtext of her underlying pain and personal struggles.

The mismatched flat mates find themselves on a constant collision course, which accelerates on a steep downward trajectory, as living together for three weeks tears a friendship apart.

If that’s sounding heavy, happily the master-comedy-craftsman Neil Simon injects humour at just the right moments. The first of two more trivial pursuit evenings lighten things up somewhat as act one progresses, while the almost vaudevillian double date disaster with Spanish brothers from upstairs Manolo (Scott Brawley) and Jesus (Allan Micallef) and the comedy arising from their broken English balances up the tension for a time. Scott Brawley and Allan Micallef nail the cornball comedy of this pair terrifically.

Expect bittersweet comedy with bite in this production. Unlike the male TV sit com, with well in excess of a hundred situations resolved in 26 minutes episodes (plus ads), at the end of this knot in the tummy full length female version of Simon’s scenario, all we really get is a glimmer of hope that Olive and Florence may, in time, rediscover their friendship.

Neil Litchfield