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The Odd Couple
Last Updated on Sunday, 19 July 2009 02:46 Written by Administrator Wednesday, 01 July 2009 10:05
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Pioneer Place on Fifth Theatre |
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Written by Neil Simon, The Odd Couple tells the story of two mismatched friends, Felix Unger and Oscar Madison. Felix is a neat, tidy, and healthy nut, a photographer at a portrait studio, and a connoisseur of classical music. Because of this, his wife divorced Felix and threw him out of his apartment for good. Desperately in the need of a place to live, he moves in with his longtime childhood friend, Oscar Madison, a sports journalist for the New York Times. What he realizes is that Oscar is the exact opposite of him: sloppy, messy, and doesn't eat the right foods. Felix's cleaning, hygienic tips, and healthiness annoys Oscar while Oscar's crazy world of living like a pig upsets Felix. But in the process they'll learn that love, trust, and friendship are more important than living in different worlds. |
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MORE ABOUT THE ODD COUPLE: When The Odd Couple appeared on Broadway in March of 1965, Neil Simon was already a fairly well-known playwright. His successful comedy, Come Blow Your Horn, had initiated his Broadway career in 1961 and Barefoot in the Park in 1963 had been an even bigger hit. But The Odd Couple, with its unforgettable pair of mismatched roommates, made Simon a cultural phenomenon, and he subsequently became in his own lifetime the most commercially successful playwright in the history of theatre. After its long run on Broadway, The Odd Couple was turned into a successful film in 1968 and then became a popular television series (on the American Broadcasting Company network) running from 1970 to 1975. Thus, Oscar Madison and Felix Ungar, the "odd couple" of the title, were steadily prominent in the popular entertainment industry for ten years and, as a result, became a part of American culture. Though some may forget which one was "sloppy" and which one "neat," almost everyone understands the phrase "odd couple" as a way of describing a mismatched pair. The television show is still syndicated in reruns, the movie version appears frequently on television, and regional and local theatre groups mount productions of the play with great regularity. In 1985 Simon responded to the continued popularity of his odd pair by writing a female version for Broadway, in which all the characters' genders were reversed. Though not as popular as the original play, this new version helped perpetuate the "odd couple" as one of the most memorable pair of characters in the history of commercial theatre.
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ABOUT NEIL SIMON: After attending De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx, Simon briefly attended New York University in 1946. Two years later, he quit his job as a mailroom clerk in the Warner Brothers offices in Manhattan to write radio and television scripts with his brother Danny Simon, including a tutelage under radio comedy legend Goodman Ace when Ace ran a short-lived writing workshop for CBS. Their revues for Camp Tamiment in Pennsylvania in the early 1950s caught the attention of Sid Caesar, who hired the duo for his popular TV comedy series Your Show of Shows. Simon later incorporated their experiences into his play Laughter on the 23rd Floor. His work won him two Emmy Award nominations and the appreciation of Phil Silvers, who hired him to write for his eponymous sitcom in 1959. In 1961, Simon's first Broadway play, Come Blow Your Horn, opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, where it ran for 678 performances. Six weeks after its closing, his second production, the musical Little Me opened to mixed reviews. Although it failed to attract a large audience, it earned Simon his first Tony Award nomination. Overall, he has garnered seventeen Tony nominations and won three. He has also won a Pulitzer Prize in drama for Lost In Yonkers. In 1966 Simon had four shows running on Broadway at the same time: Sweet Charity, Star Spangled Girl, The Odd Couple, and Barefoot in the Park. His portfolio includes the light comedies Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple, the darker, more autobiographical works, Chapter Two and the Eugene Trilogy made up of Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound, and his books for musical comedies, Sweet Charity and Promises, Promises. He has also written screenplays for more than twenty films. These include adaptations of his own plays as well as original work, including The Out-of-Towners, Murder by Death and The Goodbye Girl. He has received four Best Screenplay Academy Award nominations.
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