Getting excited about The Odd Couple

I'm major-league excited about Trinity Rep's next production, Neil Simon's classic comedy The Odd Couple. My season of Simon was cut short last fall after I saw Brighton Beach Memoirs on Broadway, so this is another chance at bat.

Previews begin April 9 with Brian McEleney as neurotic neatnik Felix Ungar and Fred Sullivan Jr. as slobbish sportswriter Oscar Madison. The Odd Couple runs through May 9.

Here's a clip of artistic director Curt Columbus talking about the play, which was first produced on Broadway in 1965, became a movie in 1968 and a TV series that ran from 1970 to 1975.

In reading it over Columbus, who's directing, says he realized that the play is "a much richer piece about friendship and about masculinity in the mid 20th century in America."



I grew up watching The Odd Couple on TV with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall and Columbus says resident set designer Eugene Lee took that familiarity into account. "It's going to have a really cool 1960s television feel."

In this clip from the Dec. 1 1972, episode Felix and Oscar appear on the game show Password, competing against Betty White, who was married to host Allen Ludden. Watch it to learn something about Abraham Lincoln that I bet you never knew.

Bravo, Noah Robbins

I know, it's time to say goodbye to Brighton Beach Memoirs and let this wonderfully funny, poignant revival pass into history with its final performance today.

Before the curtain comes down, here's a clip of the delightful Noah Robbins making his Broadway debut as playwright Neil Simon's alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome:



It's so sad when a show you love closes suddenly and much, much too soon. To the cast and creative team, thank-you for an evening of theatre that I'll always cherish.

Where have all the Neil Simon fans gone?

I can't believe it. I saw the Broadway revival of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs a week ago tonight and now, a provisional closing notice has been posted for Sunday. Its companion, Broadway Bound, which I was so looking forward to seeing, has been canceled. I feel like crying.

Why can't a play with so much humor and heart, with a terrific cast, find an audience? I mean, newcomer Noah Robbins is hilarious and sweet as Simon's teenage alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome. And Laurie Metcalf exudes so much strength in a memorable performance as his mother, Kate.

Last week, Brighton Beach Memoirs could fill just 61 percent of the 1,200 seats at the Nederlander Theatre, with an average paid admission of only $21. 32. With lackluster ticket sales, the producers simply couldn't justify spending any more money, a source told The New York Times.

The original production opened in 1983 and ran for three years, making a star out of Matthew Broderick, who garnered a Tony award. What happened this time?

Are fans of Neil Simon simply dying out and not being replaced, as David Edelstein implies in New York magazine? Edelstein admits that Simon's plays "connected with their audience on a level that theater almost never does anymore" but questions whether they can be made to seem fresh or new.

I disagree. I think director David Cromer brought a level of depth and understanding to Brighton Beach Memoirs that I wasn't expecting. The story of a struggling Jewish family during the Depression seemed so relevant. It wasn't at all an exercise in nostalgia. (And as I said in my review, you didn't have to be Jewish to relate.)

According to the most recent statistics from the League of American Theatre Producers, tourists purchased about 65 percent of the nearly 12.3 million tickets sold to Broadway shows. And foreign tourists comprised more than 15 percent of attendees.

That's great for the New York City economy but not so good for those of us who love plays and don't care whether or not there's a famous face in the cast.

President and Mrs. Obama's trip to see Joe Turner's Come and Gone in the spring is the exception to the rule - it seems like most people come to Broadway these days to see a musical or someone they recognize from movies or television.

I guess the issue is closer to what producer David Richenthal told The New York Times earlier in the week about casting Abigail Breslin as Helen Keller in a Broadway revival of The Miracle Worker:

“It’s simply naïve to think that in this day and age, you’ll be able to sell tickets to a play revival solely on the potential of the production to be a great show or on the potential for an unknown actress to give a breakthrough performance. I would consider it financially irresponsible to approach a major revival without making a serious effort to get a star.”

Hey, I'm not knocking it. Those tourists pay salaries and keep thousands of small businesses afloat. I love seeing musicals and big stars, too. But we're pretty close to the point where Broadway consists of musicals and limited runs of plays with celebrities.

As a fan of 20th century American drama who always hopes to discover a great performance by an actor who's unknown to me, that makes me sad.

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Gratuitous Violins rating: **** out of ****

Way back on July 4, 2008, I wrote a blog post wishing Neil Simon a happy birthday and bemoaning the fact that while I'd seen most of the movie versions of his plays, I'd never seen one on stage.

Well, the theatre gods heard my prayers.

When it was announced that not one but two Simon revivals would open on Broadway this fall, with Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound playing in repertory, I was beside myself with anticipation.

Then I started to worry. Would the plays be too Jewish? Would they be Jewish enough? Would they seem outdated? Would Noah Robbins as Simon's alter ego Eugene Morris Jerome be as good as I imagined Matthew Broderick was in his Tony-winning performance in the original Brighton Beach Memoirs?

I'm happy to report that all of my anxiety was for naught.

Brighton Beach Memoirs, set in the late 1930s, is a semi-autobiographical account of the playwright's Brooklyn childhood. The Jerome family - Eugene, his older brother Stan, and parents Jack and Kate, share their home with Kate's widowed sister Blanche and her daughters, Laurie and Nora.

Just as director David Cromer did with Our Town off-Broadway, he brilliantly strips this play down to its essence: a warm, humorous portrait of a family scraping to get by during the Great Depression. They're absolutely Jewish but you don't have to be to appreciate their struggles, their humor and their hopes and fears.

Robbins is remarkable as the 15-year-old Eugene, obsessed with baseball and discovering girls, taking careful notes about his family in his journal for the play he hopes to write someday - if he doesn't play for the Yankees. He makes Simon's quips sound so natural. What a confident, winning performance from a 19-year-old in his Broadway debut.

Dennis Boutsikaris is wonderful as Jack Jerome, a gentle, understanding man who's in danger of wearing himself out providing for the seven people living under his roof.

And I loved Laurie Metcalf as Kate, who's not spouting one-liners but getting at the real emotion contained in those lines. She is an awesome Jewish mother. It's a role that would be so easy to overplay but Metcalf gets to the strength behind the stereotype.

As Blanche, Jessica Hecht has her hands full raising her two daughters, the rebellious teenager Nora, played by Alexandra Socha, and the sweet but sickly Laurie, played by Grace Bea Lawrence, while trying not to be a burden on her sister's family.

Some of my favorite scenes take place in the tiny second-floor bedroom Eugene shares with Santino Fontana's Stanley. They argue and confide in each other and clearly love each other. Listening to Stanley explain a thing or two about the facts of life to his little brother - and watching Eugene's reaction - is hysterical.

But as funny as this play is, it's also quite serious and moving at times. We know war is looming and everything that means for a Jewish family one generation removed from the old country. Under Cromer's direction, the talented cast adjusts seamlessly as emotions change.

Designer John Lee Beatty crams a lot into his set. I sat in the left orchestra, a few rows from the stage, which is a great vantage point for Eugene and Stanley's bedroom and the front door. While the dining room table is stage right, the cast did a good enough job of projecting that I didn't feel left out during the dinner scene.

Now, I'm even more excited to see Broadway Bound, which takes place a decade later. The cast includes Boutsikaris, Metcalf, Fontana and Hecht but with Josh Grisetti as the adult Eugene. Previews begin Nov. 18 and this time, I'm not nervous at all because I know it's in great hands.

My must-see fall shows, Broadway edition

Maybe it's the Obama Effect or just a coincidence but there are five shows opening on Broadway this fall that deal with the subject of race in America - musicals Ragtime, Memphis and Finian's Rainbow and plays Superior Donuts and Race.

Three of them - a revival of Ragtime and two new plays, Tracy Letts' Superior Donuts and David Mamet's Race - are among the shows I'm most looking forward to seeing as the 2009-2010 Broadway season gets under way.

Why those three? Well, I've always been interested in 20th century American history, not so much from the perspective of momentous events but from a social and cultural angle - where we come from and how we get along.

Ragtime, based on E.L. Doctorow's novel, with a score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, focuses on three families - African-American, Jewish immigrant and WASP - at the turn of the century. I loved the book and from listening to the music, I think it does a wonderful job of telling those intertwined stories.

Superior Donuts, fresh from the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, is a contemporary look at a diverse, changing Chicago neighborhood. After seeing so many terrific Chicago actors in August: Osage County, I'm eager for more, including Jon Michael Hill, who's making his Broadway debut. He's won raves for his performance as a teenager who works in a doughnut shop owned by Michael McKean. (From Spinal Tap! Laverne & Shirley!)

And Race - well, no doubt Mamet will have something interesting and incendiary to say. Plus, of all the big-name movie and tv actors who'll be treading the boards this fall, it has the one I'm most excited about - Richard Thomas. Yes, I realize James Spader is in it, and David Alan Grier and Kerry Washington. But c'mon, The Waltons! I grew up pre-VCR, pre-cable. Network tv was all I had. 'Nuff said.

I'm also pretty pumped about seeing A Steady Rain. Yes, I want to see how Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig will transform themselves into Chicago cops in Keith Huff's two-hander play. But no doubt about it, I'm also looking forward to staring dreamily at Hugh Jackman for 90 uninterrupted minutes. (Although the Playbill, which features their melded faces, is creepy beyond words.)

And I simply cannot miss the revivals of two Neil Simon plays, Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound. I'm really looking foward to seeing what Chicagoan David Cromer, who directed the amazing Our Town, will do with them.

The plays are thinly veiled accounts of Simon's youth growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s and '40s. Which means, I know, creaky, self-deprecating Jewish humor. What can I say? Lines like this truly make me laugh:

"I hate my name - Eugene Morris Jerome. How am I ever gonna to play for the Yankees with a name like that? All the best Yankees are Italian. My mother makes spaghetti with ketchup. What chance to I have?"

And this:

"And when they saw the Statue of Liberty they started to cry. The women wailing and the men shaking and everyone praying. And you want to know why, because they took one look at that statue and said, 'That's not a Jewish woman, we're gonna have problems again.' ''

Oy, I can't wait!

The Neil Simon press non-event

So the promised tweets from today's press event for Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound had me glued to my Twitter account. Sadly they turned out to be less than riveting.

Hey Boneau/Bryan-Brown, if you're going alert twitterdom to "Make sure you follow us this afternoon as we tweet live from The Neil Simon Plays press event starting around 6ish," please try to have something more interesting to say than this:

1.) The photogs are ready for the cast.
2.) Does Neil Simon have a caricature at Sardi's? If not, he should.
3.) They did readings of both plays today. That's a lot of Simon.
4.) Neil Simon is here. Surprise! (And that was a re-tweet from someone else.)
5.) David Cromer says he dresses from the "rumpled genius" line of clothing.
6.) Cromer said the key to these plays is only casting the perfect actors in each part.

No. 5 is kind of funny. As for the rest, meh!

That's okay, I'm still psyched about the revival of these plays, which tell the story of a Jewish family in Brooklyn in the 1930s and '40s and are a thinly veiled account of Simon's life and career.

And of course I can't stay mad for long. Just look at the picture: Noah Robbins, who plays Simon's alter ego Eugene Morris Jerome in Brighton Beach Memoirs, Neil Simon himself, Josh Grisetti, who plays Eugene in Broadway Bound and director David Cromer, of the amazing Our Town off-Broadway.

I'm a little verklempt.

The first preview of Brighton Beach Memoirs is Oct. 2 and it opens Oct. 25. Broadway Bound previews begin Nov. 18 and it opens Dec. 2. They'll play in repertory at the Nederlander Theatre. Preview tickets are only $50 if you order by Sept. 6.

Trinity Rep's new season: second chances

I love this time of year, when regional theatres announce their shows for the upcoming season. I can only imagine how difficult it must be in this economy to put together a mix of crowd-pleasers and new works that you hope will draw an audience.

Trinity Repertory Company unveiled it's 2009-2010 lineup this week. The theme for the season, according to artistic director Curt Columbus and associate director Craig Watson, is second chances.

Here's what they have to say:

“Starting over and taking up the challenge is something we’re all facing, regardless of ideology,” Watson says. “We wanted a season that people would have fun with – giving us all a second chance, a second wind, with music and laughter,” adds Columbus.

Trinity Rep doesn't usually tackle a lot of musicals, so I'm really looking forward to Kander and Ebb's classic Cabaret. And The Odd Couple, wow. I've seen so many of the movies made from Neil Simon's plays but I've never had a chance to see one on stage. In fact, I only know either of those shows from their film and television incarnations.

I saw Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House a couple years ago and really enjoyed it. She has a good ear for witty dialog and creates some great, quirky characters. I'm hoping Dead Man's Cell Phone will be another insightful look at modern life.

I have to admit that I've never heard of Shooting Star or its playwright, Steven Deitz. But I do love romantic comedies. Likewise, I'm not familiar with Pamela Gien, but the Syringa Tree sounds like a very moving personal story.

As for Twelfth Night, well, after seeing a few of Shakespeare's tragedies in a row, it'll be nice change of pace.

Here's the lineup: (And of course, A Christmas Carol is returning, from Nov. 20 to Dec. 27.)

Cabaret book by Joe Masteroff, music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb
September 11 – October 11 in the Chace Theater
Berlin, 1931: music, money, and love are there for the taking. Cliff seeks inspiration for his novel. He finds it in Sally Bowles, the Kit Kat Klub’s chanteuse, who charms him into sharing his apartment. The emcee has not one but two ladies to keep him company. The landlady’s found new love with the grocer. Yet outside the cabaret the world is changing: what's in store for Sally and her friends? Cabaret celebrates the indomitable human spirit.

Shooting Star by Steven Dietz
October 16 – November 22 in the Dowling Theater
A young man and woman fell in love in college, and promised each other they’d change the world. Twenty years later, they meet unexpectedly in a snow-bound airport. Sharing stories deep into the night, they discover who they’ve become as they recall who they were. When morning comes, all flights are cleared for departure – what’s the final destination for these two? The author of God’s Country and Lonely Planet gives us that rare thing: a truly smart romantic comedy.

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
January 29 – March 7 in the Chace Theater
Shipwrecked, orphaned, separated from her twin brother, disguised as a boy in a hostile country – when Viola thinks things can’t get worse, she falls for her new boss, the Duke. He pines for Olivia, who’s sworn off men – till she met Viola’s male alter-ego. Spurned suitors, servants with delusions of grandeur, and Viola’s big, big love for the Duke – it’s a giddy mess that’ll put someone in the madhouse. Shakespeare’s meditation on love and identity is one of his most nuanced – and funniest – comedies.

Dead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl
February 19 – March 28 in the Dowling Theater
Why doesn’t he answer that phone?! Jean picks it up, and finds herself holding his legacy in her hand, along with the phone. Think about it: when we leave our bodies, do we live on in our cell phones, iPods, GPS’s, and PDA’s? Do these indispensable tools, these grown-up toys, hold the secrets to the afterlife? From the author of The Clean House, another whimsical comedy about life, death, and love in these modern times – and the connections, real and virtual, holding them together.

The Odd Couple by Neil Simon
April 9 – May 9 in the Chace Theater
Oscar’s wife has left him. Alone in his big apartment on Riverside Drive, his slovenly ways run happily amok. Then, Felix’s wife kicks him out. Concerned about his poker buddy, Oscar takes Felix in, but there’s a problem: Felix is a neat-freak, and his compulsive cleanliness drives Oscar to distraction. What will these woefully, wonderfully mismatched roommates learn from each other? Can they stay together, or is their living situation hopeless? Hilarity ensues in Neil Simon’s beloved touchstone of American comedy.

The Syringa Tree by Pamela Gien
April 30 – May 30 in the Dowling Theater
Growing up under Apartheid, six-year-old Lizzie confronts rules she cannot understand. Why must her nanny keep her daughter hidden? Among twenty-eight characters capturing four generations, she paints an evocative portrait of the abiding love between two families – one black, one white. History’s shocking events unravel, mingled with the resonant rites of passage all families share. As Lizzie comes of age, we experience her sacrifice and liberation, and the bonds which cannot be broken.

Born on the Fourth of July

I've been trying to think about what I should write for my Independence Day blog post - something patriotic, but also theatre-related. At the same time, I've also been looking over a list of the longest running Broadway plays, and I realized that the Fourth of July also marks the birthday of Neil Simon - one of America's greatest and most prolific playwrights.

If you look at Playbill's list of the longest-running Broadway shows, it's top-heavy with musicals - no surprise there. But I was curious about the longest-running plays, and there aren't that many in the Top 100. I counted 29, less than a third. Four of them - Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite and Brighton Beach Memoirs - were written by Simon, who turns 81 years old today.

The honor for the longest-running Broadway play goes to Life with Father, based on the humorous stories that Clarence Day wrote about growing up in an affluent New York City family in the 1890s. Life with Father ran for 3,224 performances between 1939 and 1947 and ranks at number 14 on the list of the 100 longest-running Broadway shows. For comparison's sake, the longest-running show overall, The Phantom of the Opera, marked its 8,500th performance on Thursday. It's been running on Broadway since Jan. 9, 1988.

Ironically, Life with Father is followed on the list by Tobacco Road, at number 15, with 3,182 performances between 1933 and 1941. You couldn't pick two plays with more diametrically opposed settings. Tobacco Road tells the story of Georgia sharecroppers during the Great Depression.

Other plays in the top 50 are: Abie's Irish Rose, 2327 (1922-1927); Gemini, 1819 (1977-1981); Deathtrap, 1,793 (1978-1982); Harvey, 1,775 (1944-1949); Born Yesterday, 1,642 (1946-1949); Mary, Mary, 1,572 (1961-1964); The Voice of the Turtle, 1,557 (1943-1948); Barefoot in the Park, 1,530 (1963-1967); and Brighton Beach Memoirs, 1,530 (1983-1986).

Simon, born and raised in New York City, started out as a writer for Sid Caesar's landmark television comedy series Your Show of Shows. His first Broadway credit came in 1955 - he wrote sketches for a musical revue called Catch A Star. His first original play to make it to the Great White Way was Come Blow Your Horn, which ran for 677 performances between Feb. 21, 1961 and Oct. 6, 1962. Simon's most recent Broadway presence was a revival of Barefoot in the Park, which only ran for 109 performances in 2006.

In his career of more than half a century, Simon has won three Tony awards for Best Play - for The Odd Couple, in 1965; Biloxi Blues, in 1985; and Lost in Yonkers, in 1991. Lost In Yonkers also received the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and, most importantly for me, netted a young Kevin Spacey his Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Play.

I've never seen a Neil Simon play on stage, but of course I've seen just about all of the movies, including works written for the screen, like The Out of Towners, and adaptations of plays, like The Odd Couple. And who doesn't love The Odd Couple, in all its incarnations? I'm hoping someday soon there'll be another Broadway revival of one of his plays and I'll get a chance to go. It seems like there should always be a Neil Simon play on Broadway, doesn't it?

I don't know if there's a natural successor to Simon today - another American playwright with the same stature, someone who writes comic plays with a broad appeal that make a smooth, successful transition to Broadway. I don't think there is anyone. I don't know where all the great comedic playwrights have gone - maybe they've all migrated to movies or television, or they're all working on their novels.

A great number of Simon's plays revolve around working-class life in New York City - most notably the semi-autobiographical trilogy Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound. But his plays have a wide appeal because they're populated by people we recognize, situations we've been in. We're all slobs and/or fussbudgets at one time or another.

Jack Lemmon, who starred in The Out of Towners and The Odd Couple, said about Simon: "Neil has the ability to write characters—even the leading characters that we're supposed to root for — that are absolutely flawed. They have foibles. They have faults. But, they are human beings. They are not all bad or all good; they are people we know."