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WPCNR On the Aisle By John F. Bailey. October 11, 2003: The Fort Hill Players recreated Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple as good as it gets on the community theatre level Friday evening when D. Scott Faubel and Larry Reina created an Oscar and Felix all their own at the FHP revival of the Broadway comedy standard Friday night at White Plains’ “Roch-sie,” The Rochambeau School.
APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE: Cast takes Bows before steady kudos and whistles of appreciation for their tour de force. Left to right, Edward Herman (Roy), Bill Russell (Murray), D.Scott Faubel (without his trademark cap as Oscar), Larry Reina (Felix) bowing, and the delightful comic duo, Maria Falck and Brona Crehan, simply fabulous as The Pigeon Sisters. Photo by WPCNR Stage Door
There was nothing “standard” about this opening night performance as the comedy duo de force of Faubel as the lout sportswriter Oscar and the mincing, magnificently annoying Reina as the fastidious Felix Unger cascaded the classic Simonisms with timing and finesse. The “Odd” but perfectly matched actors packed their styles with the emotion of real persons, becoming the characters everyone knows in a thoroughly charming winning way. The duo played off each other in the same brilliant way they handled Art in that FHP production last season.
Attention to Directorial Detail
Jim Brownold’s direction poured the actors into their characters, making them stay in character, choreographing the stage traffic to the extent that the audience feels as if they are peering into an apartment and seeing incompatibility incomparably incarnated on stage by the company.
Reina played his Felix in classic Tony Randall-mode, assuming an uncanny similarity to the actor renowned for creating the TV Felix in the long running sitcom derived from the same show. Reina was a little stiff in the Opening Act I, playing the pathos and emotions of the suddenly homeless Felix too quickly. He seeks solace with his poker buddies. The buds are worried about Felix’s wheareabouts, after they learn his wife Francis has kicked him out.
Mr. Reina got more into Felix soon, however, warming nicely and took over the vintage, still-funny-after-all-these-years material masterfully in Acts II & III.
OSCAR’S APARTMENT at “The Roc-sie” Photo by WPCNR Stage Door
The first act is a tough one demanding him to set Felix’s emotional state, character, and vulnerability while exhibiting his selfish streak all at once. In Act II, Reina’s manifestations of Felix’s shoulder pain, his stuffed ears, are when he really gets going and lets loose for laughs. The first Act has a lot for Reina to lay on the audience quickly and he succeeded gamely Friday feeling it out and he’ll only get better.
Faubel’s Oscar Madison is a different, emotionally real Oscar. Faubel’s Oscar seemed more human than either the Matthau or Klugman versions who I always felt were playing Oscar Madison for the lines and the laughs and failed to deliver the affection and friendship bonds that Faubel showcased in the role Friday evening.
Laughs and Sensitivity in the Audience.
The major blowup between Oscar and Felix in Act III was well-done for the first time through, Faubel almost overplaying, but bringing out the pathos of a friend having to push a friend away reluctantly that I felt.
Faubel is terrific at delivering withering invective. He is snide, biting, sarcastic, brutally insulting and slices up Felix with the fine daggers of Simon’s wit. His Oscar throwing Felix out of the apartment is funny and sad all at once, playing the audience between two extremes.
The audience responded with great laughter but ruefully, feeling the serious emotional irony of the quarrel. It was anguish among the great laughs, and just about right.
Born to Brood
Faubel, playing Oscar Madison, has a great knack for playing brooding, self-centered, selfish personalities. He affects the lazy unkempt, undisciplined Oscarisms comfortably, starting a little slowly, too but getting more comfortable with the bombast and exasperation escalation the Oscar role demands, and seems to relish every reposte. He brings it right up to the “ overplay” and stops, a great knack, time and again during the segment when Felix’s sense of neatness had finally driven Oscar to a major crisis in their relationship.
The Felix that Reina delivers in Acts II & III is so much like the Tony Randall we know and love in the role, that Reina is to be commended for his imitation. He is perfectly built for it, wears the ridiculous short sleeve white shirts, and seersucker suits popular on Madison Avenue in the 1960s with supercilious aplomb. He is Tony Randall. But he puts a lot of Larry Reina in him, too.
THE GHOSTS OF PRODUCTIONS PAST Haunted the mahogony, domed old theatre at Rochambeau School Friday evening,lighting up with the premier of Fort Hill Players 66th season in White Plains. Rochambeau’s old chandeliers, plaster-perfect acoustics practiced their old footlight magic. Photo by WPCNR Stage Door
Reina in the London Broil scene when Oscar is late for a dinner, dominates the laughs with his hurt, sensitive face, feminine mannerisms and poutish manner. A lot is demanded of Reina and he delivers the classics: the nervousness with the Pigeon Sisters who come to dinner, he plays well and makes a man watching recoil, because I remember that shyness around women, too. Reina’s Felix nails that scene with the Pigeon Sisters.
Crehan and Falck as Pigeon Sisters Steal Show.
Favorites of the audience were the splendidly comic Brona Crehan the Irish import, as Gwendolyn Pigeon, and Maria Falck as her sister Cecily in Act II, Scene II. Both actresses affect English accents in superb high coquetry and deliver the silly giddy lines in ways that come through to the audience.
The ladies camp up 1965 styles just the way this reviewer remembers, Crehan the more voluptuous of the two affecting a bee-hive Mary Tyler Moore “bouffant-do” and the diminutive sexy Ms. Falck sporting the long streaming “fall” look, and white go-go boots that whisked this reporter back in time. I knew girls like that way back when.
These ladies are born-to-be-comics and Brownold has brought them out. You’ll love their giddiness, not overplayed, you’ll chuckle at their coy double entendres, (so typical of dating in the 60s), with Ms. Falck having the slight comic edge because she has the best punch lines. Reina and Faubel and the two ladies bring off this very key dinner scene very believably. You feel the chemistry between the four.
Cameos in Lobby Showcase
You sense with awkwardness the girls’ uncomfortableness with Felix (how I remember dates like that!), and Felix’s ability to move the girls’ tears, a very hard scene to get right, was done gamely by the ladies and Mr. Reina. It will play better and better.
Ms. Crehan and Ms. Falck act like sisters and seem very sisterly, intuitive in their perception of what each other is feeling towards Felix and Oscar. Crehan’s high falooting flirting is just under over the top, about right, and Ms. Falck’s snooty seductiveness is attractive, funny, giddy, all those things that 60s career gals were. The pair have great chemistry, just like Reina and Faubel. Hopefully we’ll see the two again.
Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry
The interconnection of all the actors, really hard to get in community theatre, has to be commended. Kudos to Director Jim Brownold for pulling together emotions and laughs and a lesson about friendship, too.
That chemistry touch is particularly noticeable in the ensemble of poker players.
The play opens with a poker game scene on the boys’ Friday night. The boys execute typical NY poker player banter with the team work of a double play combination, warming up the audience nicely in Act I . Bill Russell is Murray the Cop, Edward Herman as Roy, Bert Gould as Speed in the fedora, Mitch Broder as Vinnie. On Opening night the repartee conjured up a bygone era of 40 years ago when men actually did get together for poker nights.
The group interacts well, gets the timing of the jokes down, and rarely step on each others’ lines, as they comment on Oscar Madison’s cuisine (“This is either new cheese or very old meat”) , or empathize with Felix’s guilt (“It takes two to make a rotten marriage”).
Bill Russell as Murray the Policeman emulates Danny DeVito in style and delivery and picks off the first big laughs with his Bronxy delivery, among the poker players with his policeman’s worry lines delivered loudly so you don’t miss them. Mitch Broder as Vinnie who is ahead on his winnings and keeps checking the time, has the best running lines.
Great Material Gamely Gallantly Acted
The Fort Hill Players leave it all on the stage in this one. They work terribly hard but display I felt effortless choreography, body language, and enunciation of some very fastmoving dialogue that ebbs and flows in highs lows and roars. Tremendous mental effort is involved especially by leads Faubel and Reina. They feel it. You feel it.
Go. You will love hearing the old lines you remember from this comedy. You’ll enjoy the old premise. You’ll see a play up close and personal where the actors cannot hide and showcase well.
Precise Production.
The set by Anthony Fabrizio is the most elaborate creations I have seen yet from Fort Hill Players. It is comfortably done with a “period touch” from the circular endtables, the overstuffed loveseat, the collapsible cardtable chairs (my grandmother had those), to the television with the rabbit ears. It had all the trappings of a New York apartment on the Upper West Side in the mid-60s.
The musical interlude leading into the show and between acts featured favorites of those simpler times: Hot Diggity by Perry Como, Green Door by Jim Lowe, Que Sera Sera by Doris Day, Wayward Wind by Gogi Grant, to name a few.
The audience of about 75 persons, ranging from senior citizens to high school students was genuinely appreciative with long applause, whistles of appreciation, and a lot of laughs. Laughs moved throughout the evening of theatre, and it wasn’t just Simon’s classic script, it was the way the lines were delivered, the believability of Faubel and Reina, and the connected feel of the supporting cast.
The Odd Couple continues its engagement at “The Roch-sie,” Rochambeau School, in White Plains with a Saturday matinee today at 2 PM, and a Saturday evening performance at 8.
Photo by WPCNR Stage Door
The run continues Fridays at 8 on October 17 and October 24, and Saturdays at 8, October 18 and October 25. Tickets are $15, $12 for Seniors and Students, $6 for children under 12. For parents think of taking the children, there is no profanity in this play. The Box Office can be reached at 914-309-7278. Tickets may be purchased at the door.
