Laughter abounds when Texarkana Repertory Co. presents a Neil Simon comedy classic, "The Odd Couple," on Sept. 7-9 and 14-16 at the Stilwell Theatre.
TexRep's version of this mid-1960s play is the female one with Florence and Olive rather than Felix and Oscar, giving director Michael Cooper a chance to feature the great actresses here in Texarkana. Wendi Evetts plays the messier Olive in this tale of clashing roommates, while Anna Edwards is Florence, who's the tidier one, to put it mildly.
Friday and Saturday performances are at 7:30 p.m., while Sunday performances are at 2 p.m.
The play's author just passed away this past weekend. The prolific playwright and screenwriter was one of the most popular and beloved Broadway writers of all time.
"The most award-winning writer on Broadway," Cooper said about Simon. Years ago, TexRep staged "Plaza Suite," he said. This time around, it's another Simon comedy with a story that achieved even wider fame on TV with the series that starred Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. A late '60s movie featured Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. A 1980s sitcom version featured two black actors in the lead roles.
"It's been around forever," Cooper said. In 1985, Simon rewrote it for a female version. The cast in this play is six females and two males.
"Instead of Oscar and Felix, you have Olive and Florence. And instead of getting together for the poker game with the friends, they get together and play Trivial Pursuit," the director said. "And instead of the sexy Pigeon sisters upstairs that they try to date, it's the sexy Costazuela brothers."
Cooper is impressed at how funny it remains. It's a character-driven play. Florence moves in with Olive after she's dumped by her husband and is, as Cooper puts it, "over-tidy."
"Mayhem ensues from there as they begin to butt heads," the director said.
When Simon died, Cooper's friends who are actors remarked that performing Simon's plays is difficult. And because it's set in the 1980s, it's now a period piece, in a way. You won't see cell phones on stage. There's a bit of a New York sensibility in the play, too, the director said.
"They're completely relatable," Cooper said of the characters. "And they make me laugh every rehearsal."
While it's a comedy, Simon makes us care about these characters. "You see their foibles and how they relate to each other. Everybody has pain and so they're real life, flesh-and-blood total human beings," Cooper said.
Edwards says Florence is a very complicated woman who recently left her marriage, which is all she's known for a decade or so. Now she's "finding a new normal," the actress said, moving in with her friend Olive.
"Honestly, how I feel whenever they come together, is she kind of takes Olive and her apartment on as a new project. So she wants to be a caregiver for someone," said Edwards, who's enjoying playing a character so different than herself and in the biggest TexRep role she's performed. Her past TexRep performances were for musicals.
"I'm very honored and very humbled to actually be able to do this role in such a big play and such a different capacity than I've been with TexRep so far," Edwards said.
What makes Olive tick? "She's the slob. She doesn't care to have a neat house. She doesn't care to be a perfect host. She's there to hang out with her friends," Evetts said. Then there's this friendship with Florence.
"I think the thing that makes them friends is they balance each other in a way. They need it because Florence always wears her emotions on her sleeve, and Olive does not. Olive tends to keep them in. Every now and then she'll let it out," Evetts said.
And about the way Olive reaches out to Florence to invite her into her home, Evetts said, "I think she genuinely just wants to help her friend. She's got the room." And in one of her rare moments of admitting emotions, Olive admits she's lonely.
For this play, women are at the forefront. For most plays, the director said, there are more females auditioning for roles but there are more male characters. That's the nature of the game, he said.
"So this was a chance to say let's give a play to the women. We have a lot of talented women. Let's let them shine," Cooper said.
(The Stilwell Theatre is located on the Texarkana College campus. Tickets: TexRep membership or $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and students, $5 for TC students and faculty. Tickets available online at TexRep.org; membership reservations available at 903-831-7827 or [email protected].)