[NEohioPAL] Review of GLTG's "The Odd Couple: Female Version"

[Bob Abelman]

GLTG's "female version" of Simon classic may have you looking for the clicker

 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review appeared in the News-Herald 5/15/09

 

The Odd Couple is one of the most popular and celebrated plays in the American comedy catalog.  It has gone from its original 1965 Broadway staging to a 1968 movie, a 1970's TV sitcom and a Broadway revival in 2005.

 

In 1985, playwright Neil Simon revised his male-dominated play to accommodate a female cast for a short-lived Broadway run.  Like Adam and Eve, this play's female rendering sprang from the rib of the original and is essentially of the same mold, save for some very interesting alterations in all the right places.

 

The Odd Couple: Female Version, on stage at the Geauga Theater in Chardon, is about two very good friends who move in together after their marriages break up.  They soon discover they're having the same conflicts they had in their marriages, resulting in some very funny confrontations.  Florance Unger is a compulsively neat, emotionally unstable housewife who eventually gets on the nerves of Olive Madison, an excessively sloppy, fun-loving sports fanatic.  

 

The Geauga Lyric Theater Guild production of this comedy classic, under the direction of Tina Burgett-Krause, is an odd coupling.  It delivers the stage play as if it were the sitcom, which does not jive.

 

Most of the GLTG actors appear to have come straight from NBC's central casting, offering mere caricatures of Simon's creations.  Marylin Young, Kate Wright and Stefani Rose, playing long-time friends who come to Olive's apartment for a weekly game of Trivial Pursuit, allow one trait to define their every action and line delivery.  While funny, thanks to Simon's tamper-proof genius, they have no heart.  

 

Maureen Tanner, as Florance, is hysterical as a walking, talking psychosis, but not in a good way.  She appears to be actually hysterical.  Her portrayal is so extreme and, well, scary, that she is neither sympathetic nor likable.  She should be both in a buddy comedy that establishes her as the featured buddy.  

 

The talented Michael Green and Larry Solomon, as smarmy upstairs Spaniards who have a date with Olive and Florance, have the potential to steal this show.  They look and sound hilarious upon their entrance, but go too far with their "two wild and crazy guys" antics and not far enough in creating viable characters.  They quickly grow tiresome.   

 

Fortunately, Linda Fundis delivers a genuinely funny and authentic Olive.  Her comic timing and well-rounded persona salvages this production.  Amy Pelleg, as board game-playing buddy Mickey the cop, also brings a delightful, fully fleshed-out character to the stage.  Her subtle acting beneath a rough exterior nicely complements and supports Fundis' efforts.  These two are the only female performers who appear to have a relationship on stage.

 

Borrowing heavily from the TV sitcom guidebook, director Burgett-Krause has her actors stand up to deliver their lines when sitting at the living room table, as if simulating a close-up.  They do not move freely across the stage, as if fearful that they will walk out of camera shot. They flagrantly over-emote as if confident that each punch line will be automatically followed by a boisterous laugh track.

 

Greg Pribulsky surrounds these actors with a wonderful set but it, too, is oddly coupled.  He goes to great lengths to construct an elevator just outside Olive's apartment, which is visible when the apartment doors are open.  Nice touch.

 

Problem is, visibility requires enormous double doors, which are ungainly in appearance and operation.  Missing from the set is a window, resulting in actors awkwardly pantomiming its opening and closing.  

 

Pilot episodes of TV sitcoms are almost always overproduced, overacted and underachieving, as if things have not yet gelled, but will.  This may be the case with the opening weekend of The Odd Couple: Female Version.  In time, this production could very well offer more fluid and refined performances, if not a window.

 

The Odd Couple: Female Version runs through May 24 (8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays), at the Geauga Theater, 101 Water Street, Chardon.  Tickets, which range from $10 to $12, can be obtained by calling 440-286-2255 or visiting www.geugatheater.org.

 

 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20090515/45ea41ff/attachment-0003.htm>