Shane Jacobson and Todd McKenney work a charm as The Odd Couple
By Cameron Woodhead, Will Cox and Tony Way
Shane Jacobson as Oscar and Todd McKenney as Felix have terrific comedic simpatico in “The Odd Couple�.Credit: Sam Tabone/Getty Images
MUSIC/THEATRE/DANCE
The Odd Couple ★ ★ ★ ★
Comedy Theatre, from May 23
Playwright Neil Simon had more consistent success on Broadway than any of his contemporaries. His comedies earned him a reputation as a bit of a lightweight – at least until he won a Pulitzer for Lost in Yonkers – though the craftsmanship and enduring charm of works such as The Odd Couple (not to mention Barefoot in the Park, Sweet Charity and many others) has allowed them to survive the radical change in gender politics in the six decades since they were written. They continue to entertain audiences today.
Classic comedy duos often hinge on contrast – a difference in some observable quality, such as height or weight or temperament, to frame the clowning. The Odd Couple, famously, plays off the collision between a neat freak and a slob, forced into uneasy cohabitation when their wives both give them the flick.
Now that he’s divorced, Oscar Madison (Shane Jacobson) hosts weekly poker games with the boys, and that’s about all he’s good for organising. The man can’t cook and won’t clean. He’s squalor-blind the way some people are colour-blind, and, much to the annoyance of his ex-wife, he isn’t keeping up with his alimony payments, either.
Meanwhile, his friend Felix Unger (Todd McKenney) hasn’t turned up for the game. Felix is meticulous, neurotic. He cooks like Margaret Fulton; he cleans with the automated ardour of an obsessive-compulsive. Unfortunately, his wife has also announced she’s leaving him, and a virtually suicidal Felix stumbles late into the poker game with nowhere to go.
When Oscar has the brilliant idea that they should live together, the war between cheerful slobbery and anxious neatery begins.
Casting is crucial to making The Odd Couple fly, and Jacobson and McKenney develop a comic rapport as memorable as any I’ve seen live (including an amusing production with Shaun Micallef and Francis Greenslade at the MTC in 2016).
Jacobson sinks into the couchspace of an affable slacker so effortlessly that, accent aside, it doesn’t seem like acting, and McKenney’s neuroticism springs into physical comedy, lent cellular precision by his background in dance, as he whips himself into a domestic frenzy.
The Odd Couple may not pass the Bechdel test, and the two women in it (named after the love interests in The Importance of Being Earnest) are simpering feminine parodies, but Lucy Durack and Penny McNamee exaggerate the roles to hilarious extremity. You’ll laugh despite yourself.
Interestingly, the playwright does give you a feminist angle, if you’re looking for it. For these women, the ultimate aphrodisiac is a man who’s sensitive enough to cry in front of them… and who does his share of unpaid housework.
Rounded out by the blokey ensemble comedy of the poker games, and buoyed by an excellent supporting cast, it’s an entertaining, beautifully paced production that delivers a fresh take on a classic commercial comedy, even as it thrums with nostalgia for all the odd couples that have gone before.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
MUSIC
Sleater-Kinney ★ ★ ★ ★
The Forum, May 19
Sleater-Kinney have a special relationship. Anyone can hear from their records the way the resolute voices and punk guitar tones of Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker weave in and out of each other. But there were moments in last night’s show at the Forum when the duo drifted towards one another on stage and, without eye contact, something imperceptible passed between them.
Carrie Brownstein (left) and Corin Tucker of US indie rock band Sleater-Kinney at The Forum in Melbourne.Credit: Richard Clifford
They have a special relationship with Melbourne, too. The Washington band played their second gig here in, Brownstein estimates, 1995. They recorded their debut album here too, with Melbourne-based drummer Lora MacFarlane.
It’s easy to miss the riot grrrl rawness of that original trio, and of the later, longest iteration of the band with drummer Janet Weiss. They’re very much a duo now, with a three-piece rhythm section in darkness at the back of the stage. But Sleater-Kinney is a living, growing entity. Many bands of this vintage have long since calcified into a simplified version of what they once promised, endlessly touring the hits. Not Sleater-Kinney. “Nostalgia / You’re using it like a whore,� Brownstein sang last night on Entertain. “The future is here / And we can’t go back,� agreed Tucker on The Future Is Here.
Fans have no need to worry about the quality of new material, though. Songs from their new album Little Rope, including Needlessly Wild, Hunt You Down, and Untidy Creature, maintained that distinctive thrill (though the lyrics were buried in an unfortunately muddy mix), intercut with classics like One More Hour, The Fox, and All Hands on the Bad One. Modern Girl remains their most atypical and best work, an irridescent singalong, bright and bittersweet: “TV brings me closer to the world / My whole life looks like a picture of a sunny day�.
During encore number Dig Me Out, a favourite from 1997, Brownstein leaned her forehead against Tucker’s shoulder in a way that perfectly captured the frisson between them. Brownstein and Tucker are in a thirty-year counterbalance.
Reviewed by Will Cox
Conductor Aaron Wyatt at the MSO’s First Voices Showcase.Credit: Laura Manariti
CLASSICAL
FIRST VOICES SHOWCASE 2024 ★ ★ ★ ★
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Iwaki Auditorium, May 22
Continuing to deepen our awareness of what it means to be Australian, this year’s First Voices
Showcase from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra presented diverse Indigenous perspectives
on the connection between music and country.
As classical music audiences have often been reminded, this land is home to the oldest
continuous music practice in the world. How this practice is developed and translated into
vibrant, contemporary expressions remains an inexhaustible challenge. This all too brief concert
gave the audience three different launching points for such creative endeavour: sonority,
description of Country and Dreamtime storytelling.
Adam Manning’s Rhythmic Acknowledgement of Country and New Normal for clapsticks and chamber orchestra revealed the surprising array of colours to be drawn from the earliest handheld instrument still in use today. At the heart of New Normal, a virtuosic clapstick cadenza performed by the composer melded traditional and contemporary techniques into a captivating display of timbre and rhythm.
A reprise of Vonda Last’s Awakening from last year’s showcase confirmed an appealing and engaging deployment of colour, lyricism and structure at the service of an imaginative evocation of her native country, Ngurra on the edge of the Western Desert.
Leon Rodgers’ Seven Sisters pays homage to the star-dreaming story of the siblings who form the Pleiades star cluster within the Taurus constellation. This story has Greek and Japanese mythological equivalents, but the Indigenous version recounts the sisters’ escape from a Jakamarra man represented by the morning star; a tale retold every evening in the night sky. An innate sense of the importance of rhythm and contrasting soundscapes makes Seven Sisters an effective musical drama.
Well performed by a chamber ensemble of some 16 players, with empathetic direction and commentary by Aaron Wyatt, this year’s First Voices Showcase represents another small but important step along the road of reconciliation.
Reviewed by Tony Way
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