The Odd Couple, by celebrated playwright Neil Simon, certainly has the clout of name recognition. It has been produced on Broadway, and adapted for film and television. The two odd characters in the couple, Oscar and Felix, have enjoyed a long life through the assorted derivations of Simon’s work. DIJO Productions revived The Odd Couple at the Plaza Playhouse in Carpenteria this month, featuring Ed Giron as Felix and William Waxman as Oscar.
DIJO aimed to produce this piece with the intelligent flair true to Neil Simon’s fast-paced, New-York-in-the-sixties style, though uneasiness with Simon’s hasty banter generated bumpy moments of linguistic faltering. DIJO’s production gave a clear nod to the 1960s versions of The Odd Couple, producing a time capsule on stage that put Oscar and Felix, the roommates with opposite levels of affability and tidiness, into a historical context memorable to older audience members and illustrative to younger audience members.
DIJO’s version of The Odd Couple offered dark undercurrents in a play billed as a comedy. Felix (Giron) is thrown out by his wife, and wanders the streets threatening suicide. He makes it to Oscar’s (Waxman) apartment for the weekly poker game with his friends (Frank Artusio, Gene Garcia, Stuart Orenstein, and Van Riker), where his dramatic, passive aggressive behavior is confronted with a variety of reactions from the poker crowd. Every actor on stage had a different type and degree of concern for Felix’s depressive desperation, which made the tone of the play difficult to decipher.