Paul Potenza and Shawn Paonessa are so convincing as the leads in Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, it comes as a shock to discover, a little way through Act II, that this couple is becoming monotonous. It’s worse than a shock: after all, these two formidable actors have easily delighted us in Act I, and we have every right to think that they’ll do the same in the play’s second half.
But Simon’s script won’t let them: it shows us Oscar Madison (Paonessa) so often being angrily exasperated, and Felix Unger (Potenza) so repetitively being unaccommodating, that finally the characters seem shrill and only intermittently comic. I hate to say it, but the TV series, with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall, was more interesting than this play on which it was based. At least the television writers usually gave Oscar and Felix an interesting problem to solve in their efficient half hour. And didn’t expect bickering to substitute for drama.
This article appears in Feb 10-16, 2011.