Article:9903; Posted: June 26, 2015 at 4:00 p.m.

When it comes to summer audiences, it’s hard to go wrong with a Neil Simon show. It’s even harder to go wrong with one of his best—“The Odd Couple.” Add to the mix that Tibbits Professional Summer Theatre hasn’t done the original show since 1969, it makes sense to bring it to their audiences to open the 2015 summer season.

This production provides everything you might hope for from “The Odd Couple.” Felix (Isaac Jankowski) is fussbudgety. Oscar (Derek Mellor) is a slob. The poker buddies are a collection of archetypes and the Pigeon sisters (Allison Canning and Jaclyn Collins) are coo-coo adorable.

Under Charles Burr’s direction, the play moves at a madcap pace but plays the silences well too. It’s set firmly in the 1960s both with the script and the costumes. There is just the right energy to balance all the character and make this play a night filled with laughter. The blocking is finely choreographed so that there is a splendid contrast between the group scenes and the ones with just Oscar and Felix. There are also plenty of fight scenes that work to the greatest laughs.

For those not familiar with the Neil Simon classic, “The Odd Couple” pairs two newly divorced men in a New York flat together. One is chronically messy and laid back while the other is a neurotic and compulsive neat freak. Living together strains at their friendship, especially when they decide to entertain—whether it be their poker buddies or the two English girls from elsewhere in the apartment.

Mellor and Jankowski make great opposites. Mellor is older and moves with a relaxed gait, except when he is angered and then he roars. Jankowski is uptight and moves in ways that are small and quick. They are clearly fond of each other and just as clearly poorly matched roommates.

It is on their shoulders that most of the evening’s entertainment falls and they are more than up to the task. They never hesitate in their choices and have just the right timing to take things from a simmer to boiling over.

Joining them in a willingness to go big and play to the archetype is Joey Gugliemeli as Vinnie, one of the poker buddies. From the opening scene where his leg bounces nervously in his chair and he repeatedly tells his friends he has to leave at midnight to the closing scene, Gugliemeli makes Vinnie a comic figure and the ersatz clown. Burr has the poker buddies doing the scene changes and even in the semi-dark, Gugliemeli makes the most of the scene changes with comic antics.

Canning and Collins are as interchangeable and Oscar and Felix are opposites. They give the two sisters kooky but still attractive personas. Their laughs are just a little too loud, their dresses a little too colorful and their jokes just a little too off-color—making them perfect for Simon’s Pigeon sisters. They make the transition between emotions well, going over-the-top to make the scene play out with just the right amount of hilarity.

The other poker players are also true to form. Ben Shimkus as Speed complains and snaps at his fellow card players. Vince Orabona’s Murray is the deliberate police officer. Davis Wayne’s Roy is the bookish accountant who takes Oscar to task for his sloppy money habits.

Costumer Corey Brittain helps set the time period with the suits and ties for the men and the floral dresses for the women. It’s all very 60s. Jamie DeHay’s set captures the vastness of an 8-room flat while giving plenty of room for the very physical comedy that takes place throughout the play. Colleen Karg has a long properties list of stuff that gets thrown, dumped and spread throughout the set. She’s able to turn the set from a pigsty to a Home & Gardens model home with the props she chooses and how they are set up in the room from scene to scene.

“The Odd Couple” is a familiar tale, but the Tibbits production shows why it is a favorite and worthy of being brought out again. In this show, the dialog still crackles, the humor is just as fresh as ever and the relationships are still authentically off-kilter. It’s a fun, well-paced comedy.

SHOW DETAILS:
The Odd Couple
Tibbit’s Summer Theratre
14 S. Hanchett St., Coldwater, MI
June 25–July 3rd,2015
Evenings Wednesdays through Saturday at 8:00 p.m.; Matinees Thursday and Saturday 2:00 p.m.
$12.00-$33.00
517.278.6029
www.tibbits.org