mar 15 - apr 14, 2013 dee and charles wyly theatrestheoddcouple .pdf · costume design jennifer...

Mar 15 - Apr 14, 2013 Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre

2 dallas theater center

Kevin Moriarty Artistic Director

Heather M. KitchenManaging Director

The Odd CoupleBy Neil Simon

present

assistant producing partners Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams • PwC

Directed by Kevin Moriarty

Scenic DesignTimothy R. MackabeeCostume DesignJennifer CaprioLighting Design Tyler MicoleauSound DesignBroken ChordProduction Manager Jeff GiffordStage Manager Chris "Waffles" Wathen New York CastingTara Rubin CastingLocal CastingLee Trull

with J. Anthony Crane

Mia Antoinette Crowe

Hassan El-Amin Chamblee Ferguson

Tiffany Hobbs Michael Mastro

John Taylor PhillipsLee Trull

the odd couple by neil simon is presented by special arrangement with samuel french, inc.

dallas theater center 3

(IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)

Speed ........................................................................................................................... LEE TRuLL*Murray ...................................................................................................... JOHN TAYLOR PHILLIPS*Roy .....................................................................................................................HASSAN EL-AMIN*Vinnie ...................................................................................................... CHAMBLEE FERGuSON*Oscar Madison ............................................................................................... J. ANTHONY CRANE*Felix ungar ....................................................................................................... MICHAEL MASTRO*Gwendolyn Pigeon .............................................................................................. TIFFANY HOBBS*Cecily Pigeon ........................................................................................ MIA ANTOINETTE CROWE

Stage Manager .................................................................................... CHRIS "WAFFLES" WATHEN*Assistant Costume Designer .............................................................................SYDNEY MARESCAAssistant Lighting Designer ............................................................................FREDERICK uEBELEProduction Assistant ..................................................................................................LIZ METELSKY

TIME & PLACEThe action takes place in an apartment on Riverside Drive in New York City. 1965.

ACT ONE: A hot summer night.

ACT TWO:Scene 1: Two weeks later, about eleven at night.

Scene 2: A few days later, about eight p.m.

ACT THREE:The next evening, about seven-thirty p.m.

Food and beverages are welcomed inside the theater for this production. the use of photography and recording devices is only permitted when actors are not present. the video and/or recording of this

performance by any means whatsoever are strictly prohibited. Please turn off all electronic devices such as pagers, cellular phones, watches, etc. the Wyly theatre is equipped with state-of-the-art assisted listening

equipment for patrons with special hearing needs. Please see the House Manager for more information.

cast

The scenic, costume, lighting and sound designers in LORT Theatres are represented by united Scenic Art-ists, Local uSA-829 of the IATSE.

This theater operates under an agreement with Actors’ Equity Association, the union of Professional Actors & Stage Managers in the united States. DTC is a member of the League of Resident Theaters; a constituent of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for the nonprofit professional theater; the Dallas Chamber of Commerce; and the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau.

* The Actors and Stage Managers employed in this production are members of Actors’ Equity Association, the union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the united States.

Member, Brierley Resident Acting Company

Student, SMu Meadows School of the Arts


J . A n t h O n y C r A n e (Oscar Madison) DTC debut. Broadway: Sight Unseen (Manhattan Theatre Club), Butley (Booth Theater). Off-Broadway: Modern Orthodox; Relativity; The Brothers Karamazov. Regional credits include: Lancelot in Spamalot (Wynn Las Vegas); Jack Kerouac in Beat Generation (Merrimack); Scar in the first

national tour of The Lion King; The Old Globe; Humana New Works Festival; Contemporary American Theater Festival; Cleveland Play House; Paper Mill Playhouse; Pasadena Playhouse. Numerous FILM/ TV: Life on Mars; Ugly Betty; The Practice; Third Watch; JAG; Six Degrees; Frasier; CSI; and uSA’s The Big Easy. Graduate of Northwestern university.

MiA AntOinette CrOWe (Cecily Pigeon) is making her DTC debut in this production of The Odd Couple. She attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and is currently a junior at SMu where she is BFA candidate for Acting. Her most recent credits include For Colored Girls, Blues for Mr.

Charlie, and The Skriker. Mia is excited to be a part of this production and would like to thank the cast and crew for their amazing work.

hAssAn el-AMin (Roy ) is a member of the Brierley Resident Acting Company and Community Artist at DTC, where his acting credits include: King Lear; A Christmas Carol; God of Carnage; The Wiz; Henry IV; Death of a Salesman. Regional: Fences; Seven Guitars; Radio Golf; Jitney; Blues for an Alabama Sky; A Raisin in the

Sun; The Lion King; The Tempest; Julius Caesar; King Lear; Othello. Kennedy Center; Mark Taper Forum; Goodman Theatre; Arena Stage; Guthrie Theater; Alliance Theatre; Huntington Theatre; The Denver Center for the Performing Arts; Portland Center Stage; Milwaukee Repertory Theater; San Diego Repertory Theatre; Penumbra Theatre; Colorado, Oregon, and utah Shakespeare Festivals. Film/TV: E-Ring (NBC). Soundtracks: Tears of the Sun; The Wild. Education: MFA, university of Delaware.

ChAMblee FergusOn (Vinnie) is a long-time DTC performer and a member of the Brierley Resident Acting Company. Selected DTC: King Lear; A Christmas Carol; Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat; Tigers Be Still; The Tempest; Cabaret; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Taming of the Shrew; and Twelfth Night. He has

worked at numerous theaters nationally. Local theaters include: Stage West Theatre; Lyric Stage; Circle Theater; WaterTower Theater; Casa Mañana Theatre; Dallas Children’s Theater; and uptown Players. Film/TV credits include: Parkland, Chasing Shakespeare; Friday Night Lights; The Chase; Prison Break; A Scanner Darkly; Walker, Texas Ranger; and PBS’s Wishbone. Chamblee was a 2011 Lunt-Fontanne Fellow and is a DFW Theater Critic’s Award recipient. MFA, SMu.

tiFFAny hObbs (Gwendolyn Pigeon) is a member of the Br ier ley Resident Act ing C o m p a n y a n d C a s t i n g Associate at DTC, where her acting credits include: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat ; Stagger Lee (staged readings); Cabaret; A Christmas Carol. Awards: 2011 San Francisco Broadway

World Awards-Best Leading Actress in a Musical for Motormouth Maybelle (Hairspray) and Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Joanne (Company); 2011 female Star Project winner (NBC and the American Black Film Festival). Recent roles include: Juanita (Blues for Mister Charlie), Susan (Race), Frosine (The Miser); Berniece (The Piano Lesson). New York Theater: The Burnin’ (The Public Theater). MFA, SMu.

MiChAel MAstrO (Felix Ungar) DTC debut. Broadway: West Side Story; Twelve Angry Men; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2003); Mamma Mia!; Judgment at Nuremberg ; Side Man ; Barrymore (with Christopher P lummer) ; Love! Valour! Compassion!. Off-Broadway: Volpone (Red Bull), Any Given Monday (59E59/Act Two) and

many others. Regionally, he has performed in everything from Shakespeare to Neil Simon, at theaters including: The Shakespeare Theatre DC; George Street Playhouse; Paper Mill; The Old Globe; Penguin Rep and Williamstown. Film: Kissing Jessica Stein; The Night We Never Met; Jungle 2 Jungle. TV: Nurse Jackie; lots of Law & Order; Magic City; Alias; Hack; Cosby. For Tony and Jack.

JOhn tAylOr PhilliPs (Murray) couldn't be happier to return to DTC, where he last appeared as Glendower in Henry IV. He has appeared in numerous productions across the country in theaters such as Goodman Theatre, Chicago S h a k e s p e a re C o m p a n y, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, the utah Shakespeare Festival,

Illinois Shakespeare Festival, and American Players Theatre. Favorite roles include: Twelfth Night (Feste); The Winter's Tale (Leontes); Lombardi:The Only Thing (Jim Taylor); Nobody’s Fool (Paul); The Play’s the Thing (Albert); Medea (Jason); and A Streetcar Named Desire (Stanley). Film credits include: Parkland, My Soul to Take and My Soul to Take II.

artist bios


lee trull (Speed) is a member of the Brierley Resident Acting Company and Literary Associate at DTC, where his acting credits include: King Lear; Next Fall; The Tempest; Cabaret; Arsenic and Old Lace; The Beauty Plays; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; In the Beginning; and A Christmas Carol. Work at other theaters includes: Trinity

Repertory Company; Kitchen Dog Theater; Classical Acting Company; Theatre Three; WaterTower Theatre; Stage West Theatre; Dallas Children’s Theater; and Shakespeare Dallas. Playwright: Huck Finn; Gift of the Magi (CAC); Puppet Boy (Stage West Theatre). Mr. Trull is an artistic company member at Kitchen Dog Theater, an artistic consultant for Second Thought Theatre, and he serves on the National New Play Network’s Ambassadors Council.

neil siMOn (Playwright) has been represented on Broadway by Come Blow Your Horn; Little Me; Barefoot in the Park; The Odd Couple (winner, 1965 Tony Award® for Best Author of a Play); Sweet Charity; The Star-Spangled Girl; Plaza Suite; Promises, Promises; Last of the Red Hot Lovers; The Gingerbread Lady; The Prisoner of Second Avenue; The Sunshine Boys; The Good Doctor; God’s Favorite; California Suite; Chapter Two; They’re Playing Our Song; I Ought to Be in Pictures; Fools; Brighton Beach Memoirs; Biloxi Blues (1985 Tony Award); the female version of The Odd Couple; Broadway Bound; Rumors; Lost in Yonkers (1991 Pulitzer Prize, Tony Award); Jake’s Women; The Goodbye Girl; Laughter on the 23rd Floor; Proposals; The Dinner Party; and 45 Seconds From Broadway. Off-Broadway: London Suite, Hotel Suite and Rose’s Dilemma. Films include Barefoot in the Park; The Odd Couple; The Out-of-Towners; Plaza Suite; The Heartbreak Kid; The Prisoner of Second Avenue; Murder by Death; The Sunshine Boys; The Goodbye Girl; The Cheap Detective; California Suite; Chapter Two; Seems Like Old Times; Only When I Laugh; I Ought to Be in Pictures; Max Dugan Returns; Brighton Beach Memoirs; Biloxi Blues and Lost in Yonkers.

tiMOthy r. MACKAbee (Set Design) Broadway: Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth (directed by Spike Lee). Off-Broadway: Good Ol’ Girls, Seed, Mel & El: Show & Tell (Ars Nova). Regional: Yale Rep; Asolo Rep; Florida Stage; Philadelphia Theater Company; Studio Theatre; North Shore Music Theatre; Theatre J; Weston Playhouse; Everyman Theatre; Maltz Jupitier Theatre; Williamstown Theatre Festival; Triad Stage. Dance: Alchemy (Doug Varone & Dancers); Raw, Beyond The Red, and Seed (Cedar Lake Dance). Opera: Paul’s Case (World Premiere). Film/TV: Smash; The Today Show; Football Night In America; Margot at the Wedding Resident Set Designer, Williamstown Theatre Festival. Education: BFA, North Carolina School of the Arts, MFA, Yale School of Drama. timothymackabeedesign.com

JenniFer CAPriO (Costume Design) Jen is thrilled to be back at Dallas Theater Center, where her credits include It’s a Bird... It’s a Plane... It’s Superman and In the Beginning. Broadway: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Recent NY: In Transit (Primary Stages-Lortel Nomination); Fugitive Songs (Dreamlight); Striking 12 (Daryl Roth). International: The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (Edinburgh Festival) Regional: Motherhood the Musical

(G Four Productions); Florida Grand Opera; Minnesota Opera; Opera Colorado; Opera Boston; PlayMakers Repertory Company; Virginia Stage Company; George Street Playhouse; Great Lakes Theater Festival; La Jolla Playhouse; utah Shakespeare Festival; Williamstown Theatre Festival; Westport Country Playhouse and Cleveland Play House, among others.

tyler MiCOleAu (Lighting Design) DTC: The Trinity River Plays; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and The Who’s Tommy. The Dallas Opera: The Lighthouse (a collaboration with DTC). Notable Off-Broadway credits: Heartless (Signature Theatre); Disgraced (Lincoln Center Theater/LCT3); A Map of Virtue (13P); When the Rain Stops Falling (Lucille Lortel Award, Lincoln Center Theater/ Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater); The Aliens (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater); Blasted (American Theatre Wing Hewes Award, Soho Rep); Hell House (Hewes nom., St. Ann’s Warehouse); Bug (Lucille Lortel and OBIE Awards, Barrow Street Theatre). Regional: American Repertory Theater; Long Wharf Theatre; Trinity Repertory Company; The Old Globe; The Shakespeare Theatre; Huntington Theatre; many others. 2010 Village Voice OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence. brOKen ChOrd (Sound Design/Composition) is Daniel Baker and Aaron Meicht. New York: Atlantic Theater Company; Cherry Lane Theatre; The Incubator Arts Project; Juilliard; Keen Company; Manhattan Theatre Club; Primary Stages; The Public Theater; Rattlestick Playwrights Theater; Second Stage Theatre; and Women’s Project. Regional: Dallas Theater Center; Actors Theatre of Louisville; Berkeley Rep; Centerstage; Hartford Stage; Huntington Theatre Co.; Oregon Shakespeare Festival; The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis; Shakespeare Theatre Company. brokenchordcollective.com

JeFF giFFOrd (Production Manager) is thrilled to be leading the great group of talented artists here at DTC who create everything you see on stage. Every day brings a new challenge and never a dull moment. World premieres are especially fun to work on and Jeff has participated in more than 30 of them. Jeff has been a Production Manager for more than 20 years and holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts.

artist bios

“Chekhov talks about the theme of his life’s work. He said it was just trying to show people how

absurdly they live their lives. That is what I try to do. I do it through

the medium of comedy, but I don’t do it just to evoke a laugh from an audience. I do it also to show them how absurdly we all

live our lives.” - Neil Simon


artist bios

Kevin MOriArty (Director/Artistic Director) joined Dallas Theater Center in 2007 as the theater’s six th ar tistic director, where he has directed productions of King Lear; Next Fall; The Tempest; The Wiz; Henry IV; It’s a Bird... It’s a Plane... It ’s Superman; Fat Pig; A Midsummer Night ’s Dream; In the Beginning; and The Who’s Tommy. Before

joining DTC, Kevin served as the artistic director of the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, NY for seven years, where he directed world premieres of plays by Itamar Moses, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Kenny Finkle and Kathryn Walat, as well as a variety of classics and musicals. From 2002-2007 Kevin was Head of Directing for the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA program in Providence, RI, and he was also an associate artist at Trinity Rep, where his productions included The Merry Wives of Windsor (Elliot Norton Award: Best Director), Richard II, Richard III, A Delicate Balance and Nickel and Dimed. Kevin has also directed plays off-Broadway and at regional theaters nation-wide, including the Lamb’s Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Virginia Stage Company, Queens Theatre in the Park, the Flea Theatre, HERE, Theatreworks/uSA, and the national tour of Jesus Christ Superstar starring Sebastian Bach and Carl Anderson. He is a recipient of a Drama League directing fellowship and a graduate of the university of Wisconsin.

h e At h e r M . K i tC h e n (Managing Director) joined Dallas Theater Center in 2011 as managing director. Before joining DTC she served as executive director of American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco for 14 seasons where she oversaw the growth of the budget from $11 million to more than $19 million. Heather led A.C.T.’s first endowment

campaign, which surpassed its $25 million goal by more than $6 million. She served as general manager of The Citadel Theatre in Alberta, Canada, production manager at Theatre New Brunswick, and worked as a stage manager at many major regional theaters across Canada including The Stratford Shakespearean Festival, The Neptune Theatre and Canadian Stage Company. Heather holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts from the university of Waterloo and a Masters of Business Administration from The university of Western Ontario’s reknowned Richard Ivey School of Business. She was ranked among the San Francisco Business Times’ top 100 “Most Important Women in Business in the Bay Area” five times. Heather is also an avid amateur musician who plays piano, flute and classical guitar.

Chris “WAFFles” WAthen (Stage Manager)Selected DTC: The Beauty Plays (SM); Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat; The Wiz; Pride and Prejudice; The Misanthrope; The Who’s Tommy; A Christmas Carol (2007-2010, 2012); In the Beginning; Sarah, Plain and Tall; A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ASM). Ball State university: Production Stage Manager (18-show season). Triad Stage: The Glass Menagerie (SM). Illinois Shakespeare Festival: Comedy of Errors (ASM), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [abridged] (SM). Waffles also serves as an Adjunct Instructor of Stage Management with Ball State university’s Department of Theatre and Dance.

tArA rubin CAsting (New York Casting) DTC: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat; The Wiz; Arsenic and Old Lace; It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman. Broadway: The Heiress; Scandalous: The Life and Trials of Aimee Semple McPherson; Ghost; One Man, Two Guvnors (uS Casting); Jesus Christ Superstar (uS Casting); Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway; How to Succeed ...; Promises, Promises; A Little Night Music; Billy Elliot; Shrek; Guys and Dolls; The Farnsworth Invention; …Young Frankenstein; The Little Mermaid; Mary Poppins;My Fair Lady; Pirate Queen; Les Misérables; Spamalot; Jersey Boys; …Spelling Bee; The Producers; Mamma Mia!; Phantom of the Opera; Contact. Off-Broadway: Love, Loss, and What I Wore, Old Jews Telling Jokes. Regional: Yale Repertory, La Jolla Playhouse, Westport Country Playhouse. Film: Lucky Stiff, The Producers.

After the play, stick around for a free, brief, post-show conversation with a cast member from the show. Engage

with the artists, learn about the production, and share your insights about the play in a lively discussion.

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Before the play, join us for a free 30-minute informative talk designed to enhance your

play-going experience. Given one hour before every performance, a member of the cast or artistic staff will share details about the play’s origins and context, as well as insight into the creative process

behind the production.

COME EARLY

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“There is a root, as real as a toothache, beneath the grin of Simon’s sunniest work, and it is one of the things that anchors the mere playfulness, ties a kite string to the broadest gags. Among the jokes there is also a sad, helpless little commentary on the cussedness of things connubial; indeed, on the exasperating nature of all relationships.” – Walter Kerr, "What Simon Says," The New York Times, 1970

"I think The Odd Couple is basically a serious play. That it is a serious situation. I think any comment that you make about the way people live can be serious." – Neil Simon

“In showing us the pain of his characters Mr. Simon demonstrates how well he understands one of the secrets of comedy: that for human beings the funny bone is often found near a raw nerve, and that when we look through a comic prism we are likely to laugh the hardest when others suffer the most.” – Edwin Wilson, The Wall Street Journal, 1976

On Neil Simon and The Odd Couple

“I hope that my plays become a documentation of the times we lived in, at least from the perspective I had to view it all.”

– Neil Simon

J. Anthony Crane (Oscar) and Michael Mastro (Felix), The Odd Couple, DTC's 2012-2013 season. Photo by Karen Almond.

Jack Lemmon (Felix) and Walter Matthau (Oscar) in the 1968 film version of The Odd Couple.

Tony Randall (Felix) and Jack Klugman (Oscar) in the television series The Odd Couple, 1970-75.

Neil Simon


Anyone who has ever read anything about my career probably knows the oft-told story of how The Odd Couple was born. The birth was the result of the union of my brother Danny and

his friend Roy Gerber, an agent, who, in the early sixties, were each divorced. They decided to move in together to save expenses, helping to defray the costs of alimony, which they were both paying. What inevitably happened to these new roommates is that the fights and squabbles they had recently left behind, after their marital breakups, suddenly resurfaced in their own new relationship in the apartment they now shared. The odd thing about this odd couple was that Roy and Danny were having the same problems with each other as they did with their wives. Perhaps worse. The point being that if you have annoying traits, habits and idiosyncrasies, you bring them with you no matter where you go. Felix (my brother Danny) was the stereotypical “housewife,” who puffs up cushions immediately after someone gets up from a chair or tells you to eat your slice of pizza over the dish to avoid leaving crumbs on the floor. Oscar (Roy Gerber) was the complete opposite. He would rather leave crumbs on the floor well past the following Christmas than to get out a vacuum cleaner, which was probably broken from lack

of use. Hence an idea was born. Then it was written, rehearsed, put on a Broadway stage, transferred to the screen by Paramount Pictures, then made into a television series that has been roaming around the world, day and night, for the past thirty years and will probably continue to do so for at least another thirty years. There is hardly a single day that The Odd Couple isn’t playing somewhere in the world. It was a natural from the day it was born.

Eventually it spawned a female counterpart, not so ironically called The Female Odd Couple. It was virtually the same play, the same situations, only I rewrote the dialogue completely to be sure this was a play about women, who no doubt suffered the same traits, habits and idiosyncrasies as men. And were no more patient in dealing with it. As the years went on and the play showed no sign of slowing down, I began to wonder, why this longevity? Why is it still being played in theaters all over the world, translated into every language possible and often repeated in those same theaters like clockwork every few years? Each new generation was brought to the play by their parents or possibly saw the original film on television. It suddenly occurred to me. It’s not so much that audiences wanted to see it. The answer was that so many people wanted to play it. Every actor or would-be actor, every high school student, college student, every salesman or dentist, every hairstylist or schoolteacher wanted to play Oscar or Felix, or Olive and Florence. Schools do it constantly, breeding as many Oscars and Felixes as fast as the giant pods produced human counterparts in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Samuel French, the company that leases the play on my

A Couple of Odd Couples

b y n e i l s i m o nexcerpted from The Odd Couple I and II, The Original Screenplays


behalf, sends me its royalty statements periodically. In almost every statement The Odd Couple and now The Female Odd Couple outdistances all my other plays by a wide margin. Amateur groups are probably the largest source of requests to do either of the two plays. For years now, people stop me on the street or in a restaurant and say in passing, “Hi, Mr. Simon, I was Oscar in high school,” or a middle-aged woman extolls her personal joys in having performed Olive in The Female Odd Couple.

Its universality is obvious. Who among us, sometime in his life, hasn’t shared living quarters with another human being? It didn’t matter whether they liked each other or not. Eventually their silent anger became audible, complaining how one whistled in the kitchen, and usually the same awful tune, while the other one claimed control of the TV clicker and blipped through a hundred stations in six seconds constantly through the night. Who hasn’t experienced sheer hatred for the sounds his roommate made while he was eating? The play represented everyone in the world, including, I imagine, astronauts in space for weeks at a time.

Today The Odd Couple proliferates on TV screens from the networks to cable, under different names and different combinations of people, all living in the same apartment, house or office, much younger but doing, to some degree, what Walter and Jack did thirty some years ago. The two Odd Couples are not the only films I made with Walter and Jack. I guess I did about five each with one acting without the other. Everyone should be so lucky. I loved every minute of each film but I would have to honestly say that the success of The Odd Couple movie is probably the greatest thrill I’ve had in my career.

–Neil Simon, Los Angeles, April 1999

Dallas Theater Center thanks Neil Simon for the use of the excerpted introduction from the book The Odd Couple I and II, The Original Screenplays, Simon & Schuster, 2000; introduction © Neil Simon.

above: Art Carney (Felix) and Walter Matthau (Oscar) in the original broadway production

of The Odd Couple, 1965.

corner: rita Moreno (Olive) and sally struthers (Florence) rehearsing for

The Female Odd Couple in 1984.

bottom: brothers danny simon and neil simon, 1985.


That Old Play?Kevin MOriArty on Why dtC is doing The Odd Couple

In 1965, when The Odd Couple premiered on Broadway, Neil Simon was well on his way to being revered as one of the most skilled and popular American comic writers working at the time. By the time I first began attending theater productions many years later, Simon had become a household name — the one living playwright with whom most Americans were familiar. His work was performed constantly on stage and screen, in professional, amateur and student productions all over the world.

As such, I not only laughed hysterically at his plays and eagerly awaited my next chance to see Barefoot in the Park, Brighton Beach Memoirs, or The Sunshine Boys, I also took for granted that one singular man had written each of these works. Their effortless wit, appealing characters and spot-on connection to the zeitgeist made them seem less crafted and created than inevitable. Indeed, over time, as I developed a deeper and more sophisticated knowledge of theatrical literature I began to take Simon’s writing for granted. Eventually, as he aged and a new generation of comic writers moved to the foreground, I almost forgot about his immense body of work. Then, several years ago, I happened to have a free night in Providence, RI, where a local theater company was performing The Odd Couple. I had little interest in seeing the play, which I imagined was a quaint relic of another time; but, with nothing else to do, I decided to endure a play that I hadn’t seen in years but thought I knew well (after all, who hasn’t stumbled on the TV show at all hours of the day or night). Oh, boy, was I wrong! As I watched this nearly 50-year-old play I experienced it not as a dated, contemporary comedy but, instead, as a classic comedy of manners — even bad manners, perhaps! I suddenly saw Simon’s play as a 1960s America comic equivalent to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) or Noel Coward’s Private Lives (1930). Like these earlier British comic masterworks, The Odd Couple combines a sharp but not cruel observation of human foibles with impossibly sparkling, witty one-liners. In doing so, it manages to be not only fully of its time, forever capturing a specific 1965, New York energy and point of view, but also transcends it, managing to be as funny and insightful today as it was when it premiered. In other words, The Odd Couple no longer has the virtues of being a hip, sharply relevant contemporary play, but it has instead acquired the values of being a time-tested classic. And why is this the case? Why hasn’t it simply become a relic of a bygone era, like so many other works from the mid-1960s? Besides its brilliantly gleaming, delightfully rhythmic dialogue, The Odd Couple endures because it captures several essential truths about human relationships. Opposites attract; just look around. On any given night at theaters across the world audiences are filled with overly controlling, neat and persnickety Felixes sitting amongst impossibly spontaneous, messy and free-flowing Oscars. Seeing ourselves (and each other) on stage makes us laugh. It’s also true that most of us, at some time or another, have promised to change but can’t. Change is hard. In a relationship it’s often impossible. Marriages that end in divorce accept this fact as part of their tragic conclusion. Marriages that endure accept this fact as part of their comic continuance. In The Odd Couple, Felix and Oscar start out in denial about their need to change. After living together for several weeks they learn not only that their actions impact others, but also about the necessity of generously accepting this fact in others as much as they hope others will accept this of them. The hope at the end of the play is that the two men will now be ready to move on to more nuanced understandings of their future spouses because of the battles fought and the love shared between them during their cohabitation. ultimately, Simon doesn’t mean to teach us a lesson, and his play will never change the world. But in its clear-eyed and warmly accepting view of human foibles, bedazzled with its breathtakingly funny lines, The Odd Couple not only endures but has earned its new status as a classic.

J. Anthony Crane (Oscar) and Michael Mastro (Felix), The Odd Couple, DTC's 2012-2013 season. Photo by Karen Almond.

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Ken Lattimer (on couch), Don Davlin, Barnett Shaw and Ronald Wilcox The Odd Couple, DTC's 1967-1968 season.

mar 15 - apr 14, 2013 dee and charles wyly theatrestheoddcouple .pdf · costume design jennifer...

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