Just a Couple Of Cards
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

When all is said and done, does it really matter what I or any other critic says about “The Odd Couple”? If every single one of us were to call it the most misbegotten, self-indulgent piece of garbage to reach Broadway in years, would anyone really try to get their money back from the scalper who just walked away with their firstborn? If we were to hail it as a nonstop laugh riot that will restore your faith in mankind, would anyone run to grab a pair on the aisle for sometime in, say, 2018?
For the record, the Nathan Lane-Matthew Broderick revival is neither of these things. It’s a serviceable production with a handful of decent laughs from two stars staying firmly within their comfort zone. But the dangled promise of seeing Messrs. Lane and Broderick top or even equal the uncanny comic chemistry they displayed in “The Producers” remains elusive. Joe Mantello’s amiable production of the Neil Simon chestnut – which demolished all non-musical box office records faster than you can say “Bialystock and Bloom” – feels like an event, but the wrong kind of event. The impression is like one of those one-night-only benefit readings, with a few extra weeks of rehearsal thrown at it.
Mr. Lane as the shlubby divorce Oscar Madison and Mr. Broderick as Felix Unger, the neurotic neatnik who invades Oscar’s Upper West Side apartment after his wife kicks him out, are too savvy to go on autopilot. But both draw heavily upon their trusty stage tricks.
Mr. Broderick takes his adenoidal “Producers” shtick, which itself was an intensified version of his sickly Ferris Bueller, and ratchets it up another several notches. Incessantly annoying characters run the risk of being, well, incessantly annoying. Mr. Broderick largely avoids this fate, but not entirely. His rigid shoulders and anxious vocal timbre illustrate Oscar’s contention that Felix is “the only man in the world with clenched hair.”
Mr. Lane, by comparison, seems to have dropped his center of gravity by about a foot, frees his arms to swing and flail, allowing him to bury his head deep in his hands. Playing mildly against type, Mr. Lane still slow-burns better than anyone in the business, and he lets Oscar’s breaking point simmer for entire scenes before the inevitable explosion.
But the comfort these two have together can also be a liability, if spontaneity is what you’re looking for. Here’s an experiment for anyone who has seen them together before: Get your hands on an “Odd Couple” script and pick a scene. Guess which lines Mr. Lane will punctuate with a bellow midway through or a woe-is-me look to the heavens. Guess where Mr. Broderick will add a sly, needy slant to a self-deprecating remark, or barrel through a small laugh, knowing that an even bigger one will come at the end of the line. You will be right far more often than not.
What’s wrong with giving the audience what they want? Nothing, really, except that these men are capable of delivering more.
Mr. Mantello must shoulder at least some of the blame for this. Mr. Simon’s 1965 jokefest may not be a likely candidate for radical revisionism, but jokes about flying to Florida off-season and “hunting Bunnies”at the Playboy Club began losing air some time ago. A more taut production would paper over the hoarier moments. Instead, Mr. Mantello lets his two stars get a little too cozy and enjoy their laughs a little too much. (The limitations of this approach are clearest at his surprisingly flat staging of the Act I curtain line.)
For the most part, the physical production is impressive without being distracting. Marc Shaiman opens each scene with a boisterous bit of bachelor-pad swing, Ann Roth’s costumes have a comfortable, lived-in feel, and John Lee Beatty’s living room set morphs from sty to showpiece with alarming speed. The sound design by Peter Fitzgerald, however, is surprisingly poor: The on-stage volume shoots way up as actors walk into randomly miced corners, and several moments of off-stage activity boom out of speakers on the side.
The supporting players are a mixed bag, particularly the poker buddies. Mr. Mantello’s staging of this quartet ranges from the deft to the deftly chaotic to the chaotic. Hatching multiple sight gags around people putting their hands on Lee Wilkof’s bald head is just lazy, while Rob Bartlett’s Nathan Lane imitation is okay but not as good as Mr. Lane’s is. Peter Frechette, the understudy for Felix, appears to be saving his strength for the inevitable day when Mr. Broderick’s pinched tenor sidelines him vocally. The biggest treat is Brad Garrett, whose bassethound eyes and cavernous basso profundo translate surprisingly well to the stage.
The focus tightens considerably as the Pigeon sisters, the two giggly Brits who live upstairs, touch down for a doomed double date. For someone who’s made a name for himself directing all-male casts (“Love! Valour! Compassion!” “Take Me Out,” “Glengarry Glen Ross”), Mr. Mantello does wonders with Olivia d’Abo and the incandescent Jessica Stone as Gwendolyn and Cecily. Ms. Stone concludes each line with an expectant, nervous, slightly mad look of repose that’s funnier than almost anything Messrs. Lane and Broderick throw at each other.
“The Odd Couple” hardly represents a girls’ night out: With its litany of groans about wives and envious rumblings about affairs “when you’re through work early,” it’s almost as casually misogynistic as “Glengarry Glen Ross.” (More surprising is the nonchalant vein of homoeroticism that courses through Felix and Oscar’s shenanigans, from a full-body back rub to their frequent habit of calling each other by their wives’ names.)
Something about those ridiculous Pigeon sisters, however, snaps the stars to attention and finally pulls from them performances worth the breathless headlines and the box-office stampede. About two-thirds of the way into the show, a victory lap suddenly turns into a Broadway play.
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