The Odd Couple (The Female Version)

Synopsis

A remake of the very successful Broadway comedy. Two divorced women, Florence and Olive, live together but can't stand each other's habits. Olive has it made. A good job, she has (sort of ) shrugged off her marriage and settled into an easy-going style of living. When her friend Florence's marriage ends, she invites her to move in, but in her approach to housekeeping Florence is no Olive and the outcome is disastrous.

Our Review:

25 April 2001

When Neil Simon wrote The Odd Couple back in the 1960s, he could scarcely have forecast its longevity. An Oscar-nominated film version followed the Broadway staging, with two television series and a sequel for good measure.

So what dilemmas may have faced him when creating The Female Odd Couple in the 1980s? Well, the options would have been to produce either a sequel of sorts, or an imitative rewrite with the sexual roles reversed.

What we get is a project that falls somewhere between the two ideas, leaning more towards the imitative. At the Apollo, Shaftesbury Avenue, we find Jenny Seagrove and Paula Wilcox reprising the roles that proved such a screen hit for Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon respectively.

Seagrove is the sports-loving, independent type who confesses, 'I even make a mess after I've been reading a book.' The scenes are all set in her apartment, which doesn't truly convey a great sense of disordered clutter. Casually drape...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com - 26 April 2001:

Updating the female version of the Odd Couple is adding a tacky go-faster stripe to an already high-mileage old banger. Read my review at www.queercompany.com ...

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