Meet Olive Madison. She is a slob, and that’s the way she likes it. Her apartment carries a health warning, she serves snacks from the Jurassic era and even her wedding dress had Coca-Cola stains on it. Punctual, hypochondriac neat-freak Florence Unger, however, leaves no drink uncoastered. She can spot a grease stain at fifty blocks, can’t serve nuts without arranging them in ranks and she wears her seatbelt at drive-in movies. Read more …
Together, they make a distinctly odd couple... but what Olive and Florence do share is a lousy taste in men. So when Florence breaks up with her husband and has to move into Olive’s confined New York apartment, tempers fray. When they take tentative steps onto the dating scene together by double-dating the Spanish hunks upstairs, things start to get messy - really messy.
Female friendships step into the spotlight as Neil Simon’s smash hit comedy of opposites is up-dated, up-gendered and remains uproariously funny. This is The Odd Couple as you’ve never seen it before. Move over Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, this is 1985 and sisters are doing it for themselves!
As intelligent as some of Simon's observations are on marriage, this is resolutely feel-good stuff. In today's post Sex And The City climate, too, the wise-cracking discourse of Simon's native New Yorkers here can sound rather tame. Fortunately a rock-solid cast, led by Abigail McGibben as Olive and Cara Kelly as Florence, deal with this without ever vulgarising things. Kelly, in particular, is a comic force of nature.
It’s a good night out in every way, full of excellent jokes, witty 1980’s design, and some richly enjoyable performances from a fine company.
Perth Theatre, Perth from Friday September 28, 2012, until Saturday October 13, 2012. More info: www.horsecross.co.uk
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