The Odd Couple, first of three in comedic season

The Bigfork Community Players open their season of Neil Simon comedies Oct. 24 with The Odd Couple, Female Version.  

Maybe you remember the original odd couple, Oscar Madison and Felix Unger.  In this version they're replaced by Olive Madison and Florence Unger, just as odd and twice as cranky.  The story evolves as Olive and her Trivial-Pursuit-playing friends try to help the recently jilted Florence deal with her loss while not letting her compulsive neatness ruin their lives.  Can a pair of suave Spanish brothers intervene to save the relationship? Anything's possible as Michele Shapero directs The Odd Couple, which plays for one week only at the Bigfork Center for the Performing Art.

“The female version is based on the same premise as the original,” said director Michele Shapero.  “A stylistically mismatched pair are thrown together after one is tossed out by a spouse.  But the similarity really ends there.  Women relate differently to each other and to separation than do men and, in my opinion, Neil Simon has very perceptively captured those differences.  It’s not simply a rehash of the  male version.”

The Players plan to follow The Odd Couple with two more Simon comedies: Rumors in February and Jake’s Women in April.  “We made a decision early this year that we were going to change the focus of our offerings and do plays that were funny, engaging, and didn’t require us to sing,” said David Vale, president of the Players.  “We didn’t actually set out to do a season of Neil Simon, but as we read through a tall stack of comedies and selected the ones that we thought were terrific, his name just kept appearing on the covers.”

The season begins with four performances of The Odd Couple scheduled on October 24 & 25 at 7:30 p.m. and October 25 & 26 at 2:00 p.m.  Tickets are available at the door, at the Pocketstone Cafe, Bigfork Drug, the Kalispell Grand Hotel, and online at www.bigforkcommunityplayers.com.