Stageloft scores with ‘Odd Couple’By Paul Kolas Telegram & Gazette Reviewer STURBRIDGE— Just how good is Stageloft Repertory Theater’s female version of “The Odd Couple?” Bonnie Stockdale, who inhabits the role of Florence Unger with an obsessive-compulsive tenacity worthy of one of her character’s dominant personality traits, has just been dumped by her husband, Sidney, after 14 years of marriage, and near the end of the first act vents to her best friend, Olive Madsion, “He wears a toupee three sizes too big, he’s five-three and bought cowboy boots that make him look like he fell off a hundred-foot horse, he’s taking Russian lessons and now says ‘da’ instead of ‘yes,’ and he walked out on ME?” The manner in which Stockdale delivers this tirade, along with countless others, would put a big smile on Neil Simon’s approving face. Why? Because it expertly provokes laughs while gaining some measure of our sympathy. However, sympathy has its limits, and by the time Florence has turned Olive’s grungy lifestyle upside down with her indefatigable neurosis, hypochondria, regimental neatness and generally depressive state of mind, it’s not only easy to see why Olive wants to send her packing after three weeks of co-habitation, but a mystery how Sidney could have put up with her for those 14 years. That assessment is not so much a cold dismissal of Florence as it is a tribute to Stockdale’s full-bodied interpretation of her. Florence may be full of heart and good intentions, but she’s also a magnificent pain in the posterior. Stockdale almost strangles on her words at times in her need to unleash Florence’s pain and anxiety on both Olive and their circle of friends: Vera, Renee, Sylvie and Mickey. Constantly fretting around the stage waving her arms in a flurry of incomprehension of how her life can have gone so wrong, Stockdale beautifully counters Florence’s emotional disrepair by turning Olive’s apartment into a mess-free zone, a comic irony her performance embodies with every gesture and intonation. Saturday night’s near-flawless
production also owed a large measure of its success to the equally
marvelous Cathy O’Brien as Olive,
who is the complete antithesis of Florence. She’s basically
a slob and proud of it, and even though she and her husband Phil
are
apart, she has learned not only to adjust to single life but embrace
it. Director Doug Ingalls has guided his cast with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what he wants and trusts the audience to acknowledge his efforts. Nowhere is this more evident than in the date scene involving Manholo and Jesus. Olive has invited the Spanish brothers to dinner, and she’s both nervous and excited about reviving her love life, while Florence is fuming over a burnt dinner. Resisting the urge to overplay their parts with broadly comic strokes, Robert C. Latino (Manholo) and Tom Harvey (Jesus) allow an extra beat between dialogue exchanges with Florence and Olive. Since the men and women have trouble understanding the nuances of each other’s native language, Ingalls’ deliberate pacing of the scene not only makes the awkwardness of the situation more believably funny, it allows the actors the luxury of adding a bit more non-verbal texture to their parts. That is the kind of intuitive insight that makes this “Odd Couple” just about as good as it can possibly be. |