Familiarity clearly breeds content: never has a straight play opened on Broadway with a bigger advance — $21million – than last night’s premiere of The Odd Couple, reuniting Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane from their hit run in the original stage version of The Producers four years ago; and never has a show been more critic-proof as a result. But expect critics to bite back in the circumstances, since there are few things more likely for the familiarity to breed contempt than when a critic is officially rendered redundant.
Noting that “decent seats are said to be had now only through extortion, robbery, the selling of a child or a body part or, more mundanely, the willingness to wait in the long, testy cancellation lines that form before each show,” the New York Times’ Ben Brantley duly cautions: “Think twice before giving up a kid or a left arm. You might need them for that apocalyptic day when Britney Spears comes to Broadway in The Sound of Music.”
He goes on to declare that if you have seen any of the more celebrated earlier productions – and he cites the original 1965 Broadway production, the subsequent 1968 film or the 1970s television sitcom – “you have probably already experienced a more authentic interpretation of this show. And if you were lucky enough to see Mr Lane and Mr Broderick in the hit musical The Producers, you have definitely already experienced more satisfying versions of the performances they are giving here.”
But for New York Post critic (and regular Stage contributor) Clive Barnes, they met and matched what was expected of them: “Burdened by nearly impossible expectations, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick proved the right couple for Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple. Wearing the albatrosses around their necks as jauntily as neckties, Broadway’s highest-paid double act performed impeccably in roles that bear the burden of theatrical legend.”
Intriguingly, this is clearly a play whose time has come again, because a production of it on the Edinburgh Fringe this summer also proved to be the biggest advance sale of all, thanks in large part to the casting there, too, of Bill Bailey and Alan Davies (however miscast many critics deemed the latter to be).
