an odd switch

THE ODD COUPLE
THEATER 50
-fall 1999
At the end of BAREFOOT, Michelle told me she had stretched herself too thin trying to produce and direct, and would i be interested in taking over the directing? Assured that i would have my choice of projects, i agreed. I immediately started work on THE NORMAN CONQUESTS, a trilogy of plays by Alan Ayckbourn. One of the most funny and brilliantly-written pieces i know, playing Norman had been one of my sweetest dreams. Needing to memorize three plays, we started on two months of rehearsal. The other men were Shane and Carey Coffey from ANDROCLES. The women were Charmaine Yeats, a college student, and Drew Shaffer, one of my ex-students from Cape Coral High, where i'd been a substitute teacher. Our third actress dropped out as we started rehearsals. Her replacement quit a week later, and the replacement's replacement quit a couple weeks after that. In the meantime, the five of us put together some incredible comedic chemistry. Brilliant, aligned-planet stuff. But our missing element ultimately sunk us. After a month of fighting, i abandoned the project. All of us felt that a part of our hearts had been ripped out (Carey, the picture of reliability, started work on the replacement project, but stopped coming to rehearsals, still feeling the disillusionment). We began THE ODD COUPLE. It was a full circle fulfillment of another dream. The one missing piece of the ODD COUPLE i had been in years earlier was that, as Felix, i was the only actor who didn't get to be in the poker scenes. I promised myself that i'd someday rectify that. I cast Shane as Felix, and myself as Oscar. Charmaine and Drew became the Pigeon sisters, who then became the Cardinal sisters when the English accent wasn't working. With a British Felix, it also worked better to have the girls be something else. I eschewed the traditional middle-aged male poker players. Felix and i were young, white-haired John Thomas from ANDROCLES played Speed, and middle-aged Sal Pedone became Roy. I turned Vinnie into Ronnie, and cast Sal's middle-aged friend Becky. When Carey dropped out, Charmaine doubled up as Mary the cop. She did beautiful work in both parts, and a lot of the audience didn't get that it was the same actress. The reviewers and audiences loved the non-traditional casting (well, you work with what you got). Poker, cigars, comedy…rehearsals were light-hearted and laughter-filled. It was my first set design ever, and creating Oscar's mess was great fun. The one piece i kept is an "autographed" photo of Brandi Chastain, her shirt ripped off and arms raised, with the inscription "To Oscar, thanks for making me feel like this…again!" One of the funniest moments was in rehearsal, when Speed says "You look at your watch one more time, you're gonna get the peanuts in your face!" With his rapid-fire delivery to Becky, it sounded like the "t" was missing from "peanuts". Shane was a bit shy; while rehearsing the scene wherein the girls comfort him, they sometimes overdid the "comforting", eliciting laughter all around (and requests from Shane to practice it "just one more time"). Trying to balance Shane's low-key Felix, i upped Oscar's energy, and we ended up with the polar opposite of the traditional Felix/Oscar energy dynamic. We had more than a little concern over Becky, who came to several rehearsals alcohol-impaired. Sal had a talk with her, and she pulled through. I went to extra expense to have cashews every performance, as one of Drew's lines was "Mm, cashews, lovely"...but i think she only remembered to say that damned line once. Shane occasionally got lost. One of his lines was "What am I gonna do, Oscar? Tell me." Whenever he got lost, he would throw that line at me, and look at me with expectant eyes. He sometimes said it two or three times a night. I loved the dope dearly, so i looked at it as advanced acting training for me. Michelle was our producer in little more than name, so i assumed most of those duties as well. I didn't mind. Being in charge of nearly everything was fun, and felt natural. It was also wonderful to know that i was now among the tiny handful of actors who had played both Oscar and Felix (i've still never met another). The production was a wonderful time.