STAGE ODDITY
Actor Robert Moloney says we’ve come a long way since 1965’s The Odd Couple
The Arts Club’s staging of classic play The Odd Couple hits the road, 50 years after the original satire clicked with audiences.
The Odd Couple Friday | BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts, North Vancouver Saturday | ACT Arts Centre & Theatre, Maple Ridge Monday and Tuesday | Kay Meek Centre, West Vancouver Jan. 14 to 24 | Surrey Arts Centre Tickets & info: artsclub.com
To a young audience, The Odd Couple probably looks like an anachronism. Set in the 1960s, its characters follow the ascribed roles of the time. Henpecked men play poker and smoke; women are nagging housewives, or good-time girls.
“Some people have said, ‘well, it’s dated,’ ” Robert Moloney said. Moloney plays neatfreak (and early metrosexual) Felix Ungar in the Arts Club’s upcoming touring production of the play.
“I disagree. I think it’s nostalgic, which isn’t a bad thing. It gives us a window on a time where we can see where we were, and we can see how far we’ve come.”
In The Odd Couple, Ungar is thrown out of his home by his wife, and ends up rooming with divorced sportswriter Oscar Madison. Madison’s a slob, Ungar’s practically obsessive-compulsive in his neatness, and thus is born a character-driven comedy that still has enough solid laughs and funny set pieces to entertain contemporary audiences, dated gender roles notwithstanding.
“The central themes resonate today,” Moloney said. “The themes of divorce, friendship, how do we maintain those friendships in a healthy way, what are we willing to put up with in our friends while knowing they’re not perfect, what are we not willing to put up with.
“And love. This is essentially a story about two men who are friends but run into some huge difficulties in their friendship.”
The Odd Couple won the first Tony Award for its esteemed writer, Neil Simon. Simon went on to write numerous other award-winning plays and movies, including Plaza Suite, The Goodbye Girl and Murder By Death. The Odd Couple not only had a successful 1965 run on Broadway, but spawned a hit 1968 movie with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, and a five-year run of a TV series, with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall playing the small-screen Oscar and Felix.
Moloney played Ungar onstage at the Stanley Theatre early last year, so he has some experience with the character. Coming back to the play after other roles, including a part in The Revenant, a new Leonardo DiCaprio film being filmed in Alberta and B.C., the actor is looking forward to revisiting Felix.
“As I’ve been doing my research and getting myself prepared for the one week of rehearsal that we have, and looking at it again after letting it lie dormant for a year, all kinds of new ideas and insights are coming to me about the character,” he said. “I’m looking forward to having a lot more fun with it.”
Moloney will be playing off a new Oscar, Mike Wasko (in last year’s production, Madison was played by Andrew McNee). The entire rest of the cast is returning. Asked if he had considered trading Felix for Oscar this time out, Moloney says no.
“I don’t have the physicality of it,” he said. “I’m a tall, lanky guy, and I think Oscar needs to be a bit of a brute. He needs to be physically imposing.”
John Murphy will again direct. “He’s a lot of fun to work with but he’s also quite demanding,” Moloney said. “I appreciate this because I think this play demands a kind of precision, especially with the text and with the humour. John’s very good at making sure we’re all on top of the pace, the rhythm, the specificity of how to get the laughs.”
The Calgary-raised actor has had his own difficult living situation, although it sounds more complicated than simply dealing with a roomie who doesn’t pick up his socks.
“I was friends with somebody for a long time and they lived in Calgary and they were moving out to Vancouver, and it just so happened that I needed a roommate and the timing was perfect. This person moved in, and within a month, it was quite apparent to me this person was insane. And I had never seen it before. Granted, they were going through a difficult period in their life. They moved out very quickly and it didn’t end well for us.”
All’s well now though, he says. “About a year ago, I ran into this person on the street. I made amends by saying, ‘Hey I’m sorry that didn’t work out.’ And they echoed the same thing, and we left smiling. That was good.”