THE ODD COUPLE. To 5 October.
St. Andrews/Tour
THE ODD COUPLE
by Neil Simon
Byre Theatre To 7 September 2002
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm
Signed/Audio Described 5 swept, 2.30pm 7 Sept.
Runs 2hr 30min One interval
TICKETS 01334 475000
Review Timothy Ramsden 31 August
Plenty of laughs but the coherence of Simon's play seems broken up to fit the performers' comic personalities.No over-riding reason you shouldn't turn a 1960s New York laugh-machine into a 2000s Clydeside comedy. And there are many funny moments in this show about two temperamentally opposed men sharing accommodation: there was laughter from young and old around the auditorium.
But, as with most such translations, loose ends hang around. Would two young English beauticians in Glasgow 2002 bother to explain their surname's not spelled as in the mid-century American actor Walter Pidgeon?
Despite hugely entertaining comedy from Gail Watson and Claire Knight as two bright-eyed types who doubtless giggled their way into divorce and widowhood, I'm not Wilde about Gwendolyn and Cecily. Two implausibly upper class gals, they'd probably think you need tetanus jabs before leaving fashionable West London, let alone contemplate living in Scotland.
They are infectious and hilarious. And the rest of the cast are fine too. But it's the matter of what they're good at.
For the cast seem marooned without believable characters. John Paul Hurley throws a lot into his off-duty policeman, but somehow your Caledonian copper doesn't behave quite like he does – while his gun-mentioning, overwrought alarmism is precisely stage New York's finest.
The play's a well-oiled machine, but here it's like a road-racer made to plough over rough terrain. Andy Gray's Oscar has a good mix of miserable acceptance of life's trials and anger when roused by his unexpected flat-mate's excessive tidiness. You believe his slobalong Oscar would try and gamble his way out of debt. But his comic method, often using the long pause to build a line's impact, disrupts the pacy dialogue.
Similarly, Gerard Kelly's punctilious Felix keeps up the laugh quotient, but his shyness and fussiness seemed a mannerist overlay. It's such matters that set you thinking how unnaturally long Oscar spends in the kitchen at one point, fixing drinks – it starts to seem an unnatural dramatic contrivance, so Felix and the women can talk.
Many people will have a good laugh at Ken Alexander's smooth-running production -I was one. But how much was I laughing at Simon's characters as expressed through the dialogue, how much at the comic persona of two very funny people and the skilled actors around them?
Speed: Richard Conlon
Murray: John Paul Hurley
Roy: Barrie Hunter
Vinnie: Alan Steele
Oscar Madison: Andy Gray
Felix Ungar: Gerard Kelly
Gwendolyn Pigeon: Gail Watson
Cecily Pigeon: Claire Knight
Director: Ken Alexander
Designer: Rebecca Minto
Lighting: Simon Wilkinson
2002-09-02 01:17:06