The Odd Couple

Ensemble Theatre hits a dinky-di home run with Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple. It is the trifecta of cheery, familiar and precise, without ever being unsurprising.

Felix Unger (Brian Meegan), an obsessive neat-freak and whiney hypochondriac, arrives at his weekly poker night having been kicked out by his wife. Divorce is a terrifying prospect for him. He is hysterical and his friends’ worries are played out through a farce of 1960s masculine stoicism. Oscar (Steve Rodgers), a divorcee and a slob who hosts the poker night in his eight-bedroom apartment, offers him a room to stay in. The two hours of hijinks that follow will tickle every audience member’s taste for eye-rolling pettiness and remind them of the annoying little things that their spouse, housemate, friends and/or themselves embody. There’s a reason they say houseguests go off after three days.

Meegan simultaneously makes Felix an alluring and repulsive houseguest. While he cooks, cleans, and flicks out napkin after napkin, his self-satisfied grin makes the audience squirm. His soppiness, while suitably over-dramatic, is at the same time sincerely affecting. His devotion to the family life that he’s lost adds a cutting sensitivity to the general banter that characterises the wife as the old ball ’n’ chain, and the divorcee as the ‘lucky guy’. Rodgers’ Oscar is slovenly and generous. Rodgers embodies the loveable and problematic scamp that drinks like a fish, is late on child support, and finds solace in squalor. Key to the show’s emotional arc is the slow unveiling of sensitivity and responsibility under the happy-go-lucky facade. Rodgers performs the nuanced transformation with charm, never stepping away from his true character.

While the central characters are performed very well, this production’s real value is exemplified by two things: the ensemble’s energy and Mark Kilmurry’s detailed direction. The group of male friends each have vibrant idiosyncrasies. Their impact is meteoric. Every word uttered by Nicholas Papademetriou’s Vinnie is thick with the funnies. Laurence Coy makes irritability an artform. James Lugton and Robert Jago are the quintessential accountant and cop, staples of the era’s occupations and archetypes. The group of friends, together with their vital differences, epitomise the strangeness and real beauty of a particularly familiar brand of male kinship. A great opposition and antidote to this decent serving of men are Cecily and Gwendolyn, the Pigeon sisters, played by Olivia Pigeot and Katie Fitchett. When on stage they offer a different perspective on the men, and unlock new ideas in the work. Kilmurry’s direction is, again, wonderful. From Felix’s timely slipping of a coaster under Oscar’s feet as he rests them on the table to Oscar throwing the vacuum cord across the room, moment after golden moment is made to shine, while nothing becomes over-indulgent.

The Odd Couple at Ensemble Theatre is a masterclass in period farce, male relationships, and tried-and-tested hijinks. Its programming is a breath of fresh air that turns from the sometimes suffocating political themes of 2019 and enables the audience to appreciate theatre’s potential for escapism, with enough sobering reminders as to avoid the experience being ephemeral. The Odd Couple is fantastic watching.