The Odd Couple Analysis

The Odd Couple begins with a poker game in progress in the apartment of a divorced sportswriter, Oscar Madison. Although the apartment is spacious and furnished in good taste, it is quite untidy and filled with smoke.

The poker game, at present attended by only four of the six players, is a tightly choreographed visual gag. Vinnie is nervously checking his watch; Roy is watching Speed, who is staring at Murray, who is ponderously trying to shuffle and deal the cards. One usual member of this group, Felix Ungar, is absent, and the others are worried about him, for he is high-strung and prone to paranoia. Oscar, a rumbling, grumbling slob with apparently no worries, appears and offers his friends a choice of green or brown sandwiches, which he identifies as “either very new cheese or very old meat.”

A call to Felix’s wife, Frances, reveals that she threw Felix out and soon after received a suicide telegram from him. When Felix finally appears, the others rush to make Oscar’s apartment suicide-proof and scarcely allow him to go to the bathroom by himself. After the friends leave, Oscar attempts to calm Felix down and find out what has happened. Admitting that he is not easy to live with, Felix lists all the reasons why Frances would want a divorce: He has allergies, so that Frances could never wear perfume; he insisted that she list every expense to the penny; he recooked all the meals; he recleaned the house after Frances and a cleaning woman had cleaned it; he was kicked out of a marriage counselor’s office; and he is a total fussbudget. Feeling sorry for his friend, Oscar invites Felix to move in with him. Felix consents only after Oscar agrees to let him do all the cooking.

Act 2, scene 1 takes place two weeks later. It is eleven o’clock in the evening and another poker game is in session, but this one is different. The room is not simply clean; it is “sterile,” according to Neil Simon’s stage directions. Felix is happily serving refreshments and reminding the players to use coasters under their glasses. Murray and Vinnie like the new atmosphere, but Speed and Roy feel uncomfortable. The game breaks up when Roy discovers that Felix has washed the cards with disinfectant.

After the others leave, Felix and Oscar fight about Felix’s constant cleaning and talking. Oscar suggests that they both begin dating. Felix hesitates, but Oscar convinces him to have dinner with two sisters, a divorcee and a widow, who also live in...

In The Odd Couple Neil Simon employs dramatic techniques that hark back to the comedies of Aristophanes. The play is filled with physical humor and visual gags. The opening scene of Oscar’s smoke-filled apartment with dirty dishes, discarded clothing, empty and half-filled glasses, and carelessly tossed-about newspapers surrounding four equally disheveled poker players set the comic mood for the action to follow. The scene of a rampaging Oscar walking on the furniture and dumping ashtrays on the floor while Felix fusses about with dust rag and vacuum cleaner is reminiscent of the broad farce of Aristophanes and Menander. The simple act of opening a beer becomes a gag when Oscar sprays beer over table and players alike. The beginning of act 3 is a classic bit of pantomimic farce, as each man studiously and silently annoys the other.

Simon also brilliantly incorporates the device of repetition. A poker game is the unifying element for all three acts of The Odd Couple. In act 1 the game serves to reveal personalities by presenting information about Felix and Oscar as well as about other characters. During the game the audience learns that Oscar lives alone; this explains the condition of the apartment. Oscar makes his entrance bearing warm beer and brown and green sandwiches of questionable content. Felix’s personality is revealed before he is actually seen. Through stories such as the one about the toilet-paper will, the poker-playing...

Vietnam
1965 was a period of considerable turmoil in the United States because President Lyndon Johnson, despite his...

Conflict
In November of 1963, Simon sold the screen-rights for The Odd Couple to Paramount Pictures before he...

• 1965: The divorce rate stood at 2.5% per 1,000 people, down from its high after World War II but up from a...

• Compare the movie version of The Odd Couple with the television series. Which is more effective and why? How does each differ from...

• The Odd Couple was adapted by Simon himself as a 1968 film starring Walter Matthau as Oscar and Jack Lemmon as Felix. Gene...

• Any of the plays of Britain's Alan Ayckbourn, who is often referred to as the "British Neil Simon" because of his commercial popularity,...

Sources
Berkowitz, Gerald M. "Neil Simon and His Amazing Laugh Machine," in Players Magazine, Vol. 47, no. 3,...