Understanding Neil Simon

I read through the chapter in this book based on The Odd Couple, it had some interesting points that I've shared with you below - some of it I think will help you focus your characters circumstances. I'll bring this book to rehearsal if you'd like to read through it, it's an easy read.

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28: The central premise of The Odd Couple is, after all, a fairly serious one: two men who are separated from their spouses try sharing an apartment, only to discover that they cannot get along any better with each other than they did with their wives. When he began the play, Simon was actually thinking about the problem of divorce "and about two men who are basically unhappy."

29: As Ruby Cohn has noted, the technique of using "a comically contrasting pair [of characters] is at least as old as Plautus, with his Menachmus brothers, and that device was undoubtedly reinforced by the two-brother structure of Simon's own family.

29: Oscar Madison, a successful sportswriter, is sloppy, easy-going, and unreliable. Recently divorced, he is eight hundred dollars behind in his alimony payments and owes money to his friends as well.

30: Felix Ungar is compulsively neat, fastidious, and high-strung... Felix is nervous, hypochondriac, and at time hysterical.

31: The poker players themselves... serve as a kind of Greek chorus who support this golden mean [of the balance disrupted between Oscar and Felix, between freedom and discipline, spontaneity and order]... [They complain about the state of Oscar's apartment and are equally critical of Felix's habits]... in their role as Greek chorus, the poker players thus emerge as a voice for moderation.

31-2: Like most buffoon comedies, The Odd Couple pictures its main characters as loners, suggesting that integration with society (i.e., through the revitalization of a marriage) is not a viable alternative for them. Oscar and Felix were not able to live compatibly with their wives, nor could they get along any better with each other.

33: Not only are they [Oscar and Felix] opposite in behavior and personality, they are incapable of compromise. This inflexibility, this inability to change or to learn from past mistakes, is, in fact, a major reason for the failure of both men's marriages.

34: Even before Felix appears onstage... the audience is well aware of his stereotypically feminine qualities.

35: During the second poker game, in which Felix plays the role of attentive hostess--Simon basically makes use of the same stereotypes and incongruities that Kaufman employed in his comedy [If Men Played Cards as Women Do]

35: Although they never appear onstage, the wives of the poker players exert a strong influence over the men, at times controlling their husbands' behaviors.

36: The "man's world" that Simon portrays in The Odd Couple is thus, in reality, not a masculine haven at all but a world that is constantly impinged on by women [in Cecily and Gwendolyn and the wives' calls]

38: Addressing subjects such as divorce, depression, friendship, and incompatibility, The Odd Couple is the first of Simon's comedies to confront serious issues and, in this sense, represents a turning point in the playwright's career... "after 'The Odd Couple,' I was convinced that I could make people laugh, so I no longer felt compelled to... I've learned to protect the serious moments of my plays."