Rivercity Players is off to a rip-roaring start with its 2011/2012 season for two reasons:
First of all, Ruth Nichol, long time star of the Vancouver stage, is going to direct the first play.
Secondly, the play they have chosen, The Female Odd Couple, is a comedy written by Neil Simon, the most commercially successful playwright in theatre history.
Nichol was very impressed with the actors who turned out for auditions.
“I could have cast the play twice over,” she enthused. “There is so much talent in Campbell River.”
Nichol herself received compliments about her own talent from some serious theatre critics:
“Ruth Nichol is one of the funniest women on the Canadian stage” said Richard Ouzounian of The Toronto Star.
“Ruth Nichol is to be admired for her resourceful, versatile, comic flair” wrote Jamie Portman of the Calgary Herald.
Nearly everyone remembers the hit TV series The Odd Couple with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, about a prissy, neat freak and a sloppy, disorderly, poker playing messer who shared the same apartment. It was based on Simon’s Broadway stage play and it also became a successful film.
It was such a success, in fact, that in 1985 Simon revised it and did a female version of it called The Female Odd Couple. Trivial Pursuit takes the place of poker games, but the questions and answers add hugely to the entertainment.
This also was a Broadway success with Sally Struthers and Rita Moreno in the lead roles.
Nichol has also done the play on the professional stage.
“It is a fantastically funny script and I am looking forward to doing it with such a talented cast,” she says.
Nichol is now semi-retired and living in Campbell River.
The Odd Couple (Female Version) will run at the Tidemark Theatre Nov. 16-20 with matinees at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 19 and Sunday, Nov. 20.
Two for one – In order to encourage more people to become theatre goers, Rivercity Players is offering a special deal for opening night only – buy one ticket and get another one free.
