The Odd Couple by Neil Simon (1965)

TW: Suicide Attempt, Suicide Encouragement, Emotional Manipulation

 

SYNOPSIS

            Felix is missing from the weekly poker game. It turns out his wife is divorcing him and he’s in a terrible state, but the guys band together to keep him from making a rash decision. The night ends with Oscar, already several months divorced and living alone in an eight bedroom apartment, inviting Felix to move in with him. Oscar is a complete slob that eats out for every meal and is six months behind on his child support payments. Felix is the type to try and clean the very air they’re breathing while also being an excellent cook that pinches every penny and dearly misses his married life. They don’t get along well sharing the same apartment to put it lightly. Oscar attempts to reconcile by going on a date, thinking it’s the lack of women in their life causing so much frustration. The Pidgeon sisters arrive for a good time, but Oscar arrives late and Felix’s London broil goes from over cooked to burned to a crisp. Oscar tries to stall by making drinks to keep everyone’s spirits high, but Felix quickly brings on a somber mood in Oscar’s absence. The three of them are in tears over their failed marriages by the time Oscar returns and he retaliates by making Felix aware of the state of his broil. Thankfully the Pidgeon sisters just want to moved things upstairs to their overheated apartment and leave to get things started. Felix refuses to move still blaming Oscar for ruining their dinner and feeling like he’s cheating on his wife. The night is ruined and the next day Oscar is on a war path. The two disrespect each other to the point of Oscar chasing Felix through the apartment and kicking him out, but not without Felix making Oscar feel terribly guilty for it. The guys arrive for poker but all Oscar can think about is poor Felix. That is, until Gwendolyn Pidgeon arrives to collect his things. The sisters are all but forcing Felix to stay with them for at least a few days and Oscar gets a call from his wife. He’s finally doing right, or at least decent by her, even though he’s got a long way to go if he wants to get his family back and Felix has a place to stay where he can process his own divorce. The two men say their goodbyes addressing the other as their wife and bury the hatchet.

 

CHARACTERS

Murray – Middle Aged Man, Police Officer

Roy – Middle Aged Man

Speed – Middle Aged Man, Smoker

Vinnie – 42 Year Old Man

Oscar Madison – 43 Year Old Man, Pleasant and Appealing, Carefree

Felix Ungar – 44 Year Old Man

 

POTENTIAL MONOLOGUES

            Not counting phone conversations, Oscar has the first monologue where he’s trying to convince Felix that he’s not so bad by rattling out all the ways he’s been a terrible husband. He’s got another where he’s finally telling Felix off for all the annoying things he does and it can be combined with a later line that’s telling Felix to stay out of his way if it needs to be made longer. This being such a character show, those are really the only two examples without getting into piecing together one sentence lines to try to make a cohesive 30 second monologue.

 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS

            The Odd Couple has become an established literary trope. You see a slob and a neat freak and the rest in history, with this play being the blueprint. It’s become such as classic that there’s three stage versions, a movie, and multiple sitcoms just based on Oscar and Felix with one play being a gender bent version that I performed a scene from for my senior showcase. It was funny then and it’s funny now, though the third stage version is just an update to keep it more contemporary.

            About the trigger warnings, Felix is described as a love-me-or-I’ll-jump kind of man almost verbatim by one of his friends. With his divorce being finalized, his friends all assume the worse and even though the audience is treated to the situation as a comedy, the characters all treat it very seriously. The hilarity is that they don’t want Felix to know that they know he’s in a bad spot and they’re trying to distract him while also keeping him away from anything hazardous like an open window or going to the bathroom alone. The suicide encouragement comes at the end of Act II when it seems to Oscar like Felix is never going to change or put himself out there. He opens the window and tells Felix he lied earlier about it not being so high up before leaving the stage. I think that’s up to the individual production how dark that moment is. The way things kick off in the third act makes me lean toward Oscar being serious and tasteless since Act III has him ready to resort to physical violence and Felix being nearly just as upset. At the end of the climax, we have Felix leaving and saying that whatever happens to him will be on Oscar’s head. Oscar takes it as a literal curse, but Felix is just quick to play the victim and lay on guilt trips in the heaviest handed of ways. Honestly for the context of the play it makes for good balance though. Neither of the men are the kind of person an audience member would want to live with. Oscar is inconsiderate, but you could almost feel like Felix is being treated completely unfairly for doing all the cooking and cleaning until his passive aggressive guilt-ridden gambits pop up.

 

The Nerd by Larry Shue (1981)

TW: Pedophilia Mention, Child Spanking

 

SYNOPSIS

            It’s Willum’s birthday but the only people able to come celebrate are his friend Axel, romantic interest Tansy, and the hotelier Willum is designing for Waldgrave – including wife Clelia and young ill-behaved son Thor. It’s set up to be a sad affair until Willum checks his messages and receives word that Rick Steadman, who he’s never met despite the man having saved his life in Nam, is finally coming for a visit. Everyone is excited until Rick arrives believing it to be a costume party and unknown to anyone else, terrifying Thor. He insults Waldgrave and his wife thinking they’re also in costume before boring them by explaining what he’s been doing since the war month by month. When dinner is served Rick ruins everyone’s appetite and complains that it’s exactly what he had or lunch and asks Tansy to make him spaghetti instead, of which he only eats two strands before declaring he’s full. Rick then ruins the game the gang is trying to play and insists on having them play his own requiring them to remove their shoes and put bags over their heads with only one eyehole. Waldgrave puts his hole too high up and trying to help, Rick repeatedly jabs at his eye trying to make a new hole but only resulting in irritating Waldgrave’s eye and his nerves. Rick has them spinning around and then reveals that to continue the game he has to read from a bible, which Willum doesn’t own. With the game unplayable Rick goes to get everyone’s shoes and knocks them down into the water below. If the party wasn’t ruined already Waldgrave discovers that his son has fainted after seeing Rick’s hanging costume and been stuffed into the closet by Willum. Everyone leaves except for Rick and just when Willum thinks the night can’t get any worse, Rick reveals he’s staying indefinitely and starts practicing the tambourine and singing loudly and offkey as Willum tries to sleep.

            It’s been two weeks and Willum is at his wits end with his houseguest. Rick’s family has moved without leaving a forwarding address so he assumes all his stuff will be sent to Willum’s. That’s what pushes Willum past his breaking point. Axel convinces Willum to listen to his friend Kemp’s advice to make Rick homesick and weirded out by Terre Haute culture. Everything they try ends up backfiring from inside jokes to strange food and even having Willum fake turning into a were-pig. Of course, that’s when it turns out that Rick invited Waldgrave and the events cost Willum his job with the man. Finally, Willum loses his cool and blows up at Rick, kicking him out. Free of his pest, Willum realizes it’s the happiest he’s been in forever and he resolves to take the job in Virgina he’s been offered so he can stay with Tansy. The stinger is that Kemp has been pretending to be Rick and is also the man who’s been offering Willum the job in Virginia. The whole charade was arranged by Axel as an elaborate way to get Willum to stand up for himself, which also fulfills Tansy’s challenge to have Axel perform an anonymous favor.

 

CHARACTERS

Willum – Adult

Tansy – Adult

Axel – Adult

Ticky Waldgrave – Adult, “The last time Mr. Waldgrave smiled was forty-seven years ago, and then it was gas”

Clelia Waldgrave – Adult, Tasteful, Patient

Thor Waldgrave – 8 Years Old, a Monster of a Child

Rick/Kemp – Adult

 

POTETIAL MONOLOGUES

            Willum technically has a monologue where he’s explaining who Rick Steadman is to him and how the man saved his life but that’s all it is. It’s not a particularly dynamic monologue so I don’t recommend it for auditions. The same is true for Willum’s recap of the two weeks that get skipped between Act I and Act II, but I will say that if you’re determined to do one of the two, the latter one is better. His best by far though, is when he’s finally telling Rick off, especially if you include the hilarious line that Rick didn’t hear a word Willum says.

 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS

            So, I almost didn’t finish reading the play the first time I picked it up. As you can see in the trigger warning there’s pedophilia mentioned. The specific instance is Rick talking about a girl he proposed to at an elementary school. She was eight and he was thirty and her parents ran him out of town. It’s played as a joke to show just how out of touch Rick is and how boggled down the other characters are with being polite. Regardless, for me the play should’ve stopped right there because there are some lines you just don’t cross, but apparently it was fair game in 1981. Still the play is performed fairly regularly. In fact Milwaukee REP does it every 12 years and in 2019 Willum was played by a non-white actor while Axel was played as a gay character. Still, I pushed through and finished the play for the reveal that it was a farce within a farce. I still don’t care for the joke, but it’s just bearable with the understanding that even in the world of the play it didn’t happen.

            One thing that is worth talking about is Rick’s traits that play up his nerd status. He misses or misinterprets nearly every social cue, eats strange food in an odd manner, talks in a decidedly strange voice, and has interests that are perceived as boring. The exact words aren’t used of course, but most, if not all of Rick’s nerdy quirks are also autistic traits. It’s something that should be considered. As of Sept, 17^th, 2021 there’s a free PDF of the play available through Jocular Theatre.

The Women of Lockerbie by Deborah Brevoort (1998)

TW: Intense Grief/Trauma, Gory Descriptions, Body Mutilation

 

SYNOPSIS

            On December 21, 1988 flight Pan Am 103 was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland while on route to Detroit. Seven years later on the anniversary of the bombing, Madeline Livingston has taken to roaming the hills of Lockerbie Scotland searching for the remains of her son who was seated directly over the bomb. Her husband, Bill, and Olive, a native Lockerbie resident, search for her but they’re interrupted by Lockerbie women bringing news that it’s been decided that the belongings of the bombing victims will be burned first thing in the morning by George Jones, who represents the American government, despite the women’s pleas to allow them to wash and return the clothes to the families that want them. Madeline appears and is in quite a state, talking to Adam and reliving the moment she heard the news, blaming herself, as she has for seven years. The women invite Bill to have private vigil and share their own experiences with the crash as the bodies and debris rained down with fire. Bill tries again to get his wife to let it go and she accuses him of not loving their son as much as she did, but Bill claims he had to be the one to hold it together. He shares how he had to return the Christmas presents and how devastating it was to lie again and again about why he no longer needed his son’s gifts. The women try to console him by saying there’s a reason for everything which he vehemently disagrees with before going after his wife again. His words shake the women’s faith, but they share with each other what they do to try to cope before leaving for the warehouse.

George enters trying to catch his breath from dealing with the reporters that’ve gotten word about the planned burning and the women’s disapproval, not to mention the 200 women outside the building protesting. We meet Hattie, another woman of Lockerbie that’s been spying on Mr. Jones as his cleaning lady. Bill appears and Hattie runs to him to avoid being arrested and George complains to Bill about the women and the mothers that are whining about their kids only for Bill to take out a picture of his son. The women return and Olive literally begs George to let them wash the clothes. He refuses because they’re bloody and gruesome and the women remind him that they were literally the ones picking up body parts and taking them to the morgue. George leaves and the women decide they’ll just have to break into the warehouse and steal the clothes to get the reporters and public opinion on their side as more than 200 women are arrested trying to wash clothes. Bill finds a ticket in his coat pocket from a baseball game he went to with his son, but Madeline rejects it as something of Bill’s not Adam’s. Olive tries to keep Madeline from pushing her husband away and when Madeline tries to bite back at her she reveals that the plane crushed her house killing her daughter and her husband and it triggers her anger at Americans to the point that Olive physically attacks Madeline, only stopped by the women’s return with the news that the clothes will be burned that night, instead of in the morning. Hearing about the clothes for the first time Madeline rushes to the warehouse, but Hattie returns and reveals that despite getting in, Madeline still wasn’t able to find anything of her son’s. She has a breakdown and mutilates her body to be her son’s tombstone. When Madeline returns with scratch marks all over her and seeming to have completely passed her breaking point, George returns with her son’s suitcase having decided to give in to the women. Madeline allows her husband to open it first and the two grieve together for the first time. The women have a bag of the clothes, but it’s Madeline who washes the first article and hands the women each a garment. The play ends as they wash the clothes in a stream.

 

CHARACTERS

Bill Livingston – Middle Aged, American

Olive Allison – Adult, Scottish

Woman 1 – Adult, Scottish, Can be Played by Multiple Women

Woman 2 – Adult, Scottish, Can be Played by Multiple Women

Madeline Livingston – Middle Aged, American

George Jones – Adult, American

Hattie – Elderly, Scottish

 

POTENTIAL MONOLOGUES

            Bill has the first potential monologue if you string together a few of his lines with it to give context. He introduces the setting and Madeline’s grief. His next monologue is when Madeline accuses him of not loving their son enough. It’s long, emotional, and starts with how he had to send medical records and talk to reporters and goes in depth about how much it broke him to return Adam’s Christmas gifts. He has another soon after that when the women try to give him the these things happen for a reason speech, but it isn’t necessarily and angry monologue, just defeated by his own grief by the end. Bill finds the ticket stub and realizes that his numbness isn’t a healthy coping mechanism. The only downside to the monologue is that it centers around the ticket and most professional auditions don’t allow props.

            Madeline’s first monologue is when she goes over hearing the news about her son. Give her Bill’s small lines that are spoken as the TV reporter to keep the flow. Her next appearance during the Second Episode is also a good monologue where she’s blaming herself for all the small decisions she could have made that would’ve kept her son alive if only she had known.

            The women don’t have many passages that can work as audition monologues, but the Second Choral Dialogue can work as monologues, particularly Woman 1’s lines can be strewn together into their own monologue about the devastation she witnessed, but feel free to borrow some of the later lines to lengthen the monologue.

            Hattie does technically have a monologue, but it’s a recounting of what happened when the women tried to get into the warehouse and ends with Hattie telling Bill about his wife scratching herself bloody. It’s more of a report than a monologue.

 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS

            I was in a production of The Women of Lockerbie when I was in college. We watched documentary footage interviewing the actual women of Lockerbie, Scotland as dramaturgical work for the show and even got to meet Deborah Brevoort after a performance. We went out to lunch the next day to talk about it.

            When the play was first written, many people didn’t have a way to relate to the characters. Trauma on this scale wasn’t accessible to the American public in 1998, but come 2001 and we as a country became all too familiar with it. I was only six years old on 9/11, but coming home to a dark and quiet house stuck with me. It was the first time I had ever seen my mother cry and she just wept watching the news footage. Although we were in Georgia, she’s a native New Yorker and since that day she’s cried every time the national anthem played until 2016.

            The grief in the play is strong, even after Deborah decided to model the play after a Greek tragedy to give the audience distance from it. It’s been five years since I’ve picked up this script, but it still made my eyes water enough that I had to take breaks reading it in public to keep myself from crying. Madeline is only on stage in short bursts of emotions, while the bulk of the play is Bill reuniting with his own emotions as the women try to guide him through it. At the same time the women never claim to be over it themselves, they just share what’s helped them to manage. The action is broken up with Greek chorus moments, fulfilled through Woman 1 and Woman 2 and sometimes joined with Olive. In Valdosta State’s production we did choreographed movements through the choruses, not quite dancing, but very much a separation from action of the plan. We used props like caution tape rolled into roses to transition from the neighborhood gardens to the crime scenes of debris without actually showing any of the chaos.

The problem with letting the audience experience the full force of grief explored in the play is that they’ll go numb. Too much harsh emotion like grief can’t be processed in just one sitting and if you want the audience to stay with the story until the end, they’re going to need breaks, though the show is traditionally performed without an intermission.. I do think that this play is a good read for those that have given time to sit with their grief. The play walks through many of the feelings and cliched sayings and their arguments that go along with grief when the pain is no longer fresh.