The Odd Couple: A Match Made In The Box Office

As soon as the curtain comes up on director Joe Mantello's new Broadway production of The Odd Couple, the audience is treated to the sight of a pair of actors who appear perfectly matched to play Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison opposite each other. There's the overly methodical one carefully shuffling poker cards with the most irritating exactitude while the exasperated guy's guy looks on in annoyed frustration before yelling at him to deal already.

Unfortunately, that's Brad Garrett playing a sensitive Murray the cop, not Felix, and a comically gruff Rob Bartlett as hot-shot Speed, not Oscar. Thoughout the evening we're teased with little glimpses of what a richly funny and empathetic production of The Odd Couple this might be with these two starring. But would their names sell out a six-month run weeks before the first preview? Of course not. (Brad Garrett is the Oscar understudy and although there is talk of him taking over the role in April, I'm telling you he looks like a hilarious and sympathetic Felix.)

Although individually, the casting of Nathan Lane as slovenly sportswriter Oscar Madison and Matthew Broderick as fastidious newswriter (not a photographer, as in the popular sitcom) Felix Ungar may not seem like perfect fits, the team of Lane and Broderick starring together in The Odd Couple looks like a no-brainer. So much so that customers laid down their credit card numbers immediately and racked up such a huge advance sale that the producers decided not to advertise. The smart money was betting that the chemistry they displayed in a Mel Brooks musical can be easily transferred to a Neil Simon comedy.

But although The Odd Couple is one of the most popular pieces by the most commercially successful American playwright of the 20th Century -- a classic that helps define the term "Neil Simon Comedy" as sharp-witted, wisecracking New York humor -- its reputation as a part of American pop culture is dominated by the 1970's sitcom, so it may surprise those attending the 1965 play for the first time to see how much of it is meant to be rather touching.

Nice people didn't get divorced in the 60's. At least not in our entertainments. Look at the single parents depicted in TV shows like My Three Sons, Here's Lucy, The Courtship of Eddie's Father and later on The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch. They were all widows and widowers. The Odd Couple on stage was a rare comedy that took a serious look at the loneliness of men who are detached from their wives and children after divorce. When Felix arrives at Oscar's apartment, devastated with the news that his wife is leaving him, it triggers off emotions in Oscar that he never brings himself to discuss without a comic jab. Left alone together, Oscar talks about the emptiness of his home since his wife and kids moved out. (Set designer John Lee Beatty provides him with a cave-like Riverside Drive apartment.) Two men sitting alone in a 1965 comedy expressing their emotions and showing their vulnerability. It's out of this loneliness that Oscar invites Felix to live with him, just as someone might wed primarily for the companionship. But the ability to cohabitate is crucial in any marriage and the comedy of The Odd Couple, so classic that the names "Felix and Oscar" are iconic in American humor, stems from their inability to adapt to each other's personal habits, a characteristic that most likely led to their divorces.

As much as I hate to focus on one performance as the reason this revival fails to touch the heart as well as tickle the funny bone, the cartoon caricature of a Felix presented by Broderick is completely out of place in this production, which is otherwise populated with flesh and blood human beings. Walking stiff-backed, with a meek and often expressionless voice and a dumb look on his face, he appears to be doing leftover bits that once worked so well for him in The Producers. He gets laughs, but the night I attended many of them stopped abruptly, as though the audience was reacting to what they expected to be something funny but realized mid-chortle that it really wasn't. And he rarely got those warm, character-driven laughs that come from an audience's empathy.

Nathan Lane works his talented butt off to keep their scenes moving, getting more positive audience response from his reactions than Broderick can get from the generous lines Neil Simon gave him. (How a grown man can walk out of a kitchen wearing an apron and holding a ladle and not get a laugh is beyond me.) Perhaps underappreciated as an actor by those who only know his big commercial successes, Lane thrives on this kind of role where he can build on legitimate pathos as a springboard for his impeccable comic sense, causing explosive laughter followed by smiles of affection. Nathan Lane should rank up there with Broadway's great clowns.

But even a great clown needs to be well cast, and as terrific as Lane is he still seems too eloquent and boyish as a hard-nosed sports journalist, especially when costume designer Ann Roth has him looking like a kid in the first scene, wearing baggy shorts with a matching open shirt, white socks, sneakers and a backwards Mets cap. He seems most natural when dressed sporty for a double date with the Pigeon sisters (Olivia d'Abo and Jessica Stone, very funny as the daffy Brits), a scene where Oscar is, in a sense, performing for the ladies to make an impression.

Along with Bartlett and Garrett, Lee Wilkof and Peter Frechette help supply fun moments as poker playing buddies. And Marc Shaiman has composed a snazzy, jazzy, big band score for between scenes. This production may not erase the memory of Odd Couples past, but at least Shaiman's music will have you leaving the theatre humming a different tune.

 

Photos by Carol Rosegg: Top: Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick
Center: Nathan Lane, Lee Wilkof, Rob Bartlett, Matthew Broderick, Brad Garrett and Peter Frechette
Bottom: Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, Jessica Stone and Olivia d'Abo