STAGE REVIEWS : SOME ODD CASTING IN ‘THE ODD COUPLE’

Perhaps the biggest question surrounding the Grand Dinner Theatre’s female “Odd Couple” is not why the show is so flat and unsatisfying, but why it would be staged in the first place.

It’s not as if it is a new idea. Neil Simon, in a move to update this perennial favorite about a pair of mismatched roommates, turned the Oscar and Felix roles into Olive and Florence for a 1985 production at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. The notion proved to be more gimmick than grabber; the sex changes weakened the humor significantly, and the show sank quickly.

The Grand apparently saw no lessons in this failure and, worse, compounded the trouble with some baffling casting. In what must have been an attempt to avoid the obvious, director Jack Bunch has Jo Anne Worley, best known for her noisy antics on the “Laugh-In” television series, play the quietly neurotic, fastidious Florence, and Marcia Wallace (the hilariously punctilious secretary on the original “Bob Newhart Show”) the more flamboyant and ever messy Olive. The resulting uneasiness is almost palpable.

Worley, forced to mince around a typical small New York flat, keeping her mannerisms reined in, seems ready to burst at any moment into one of her signature wide-mouthed yelps. She strains to keep Florence the subdued foil for Olive, and it shows.

As Olive, Wallace storms about in baggy, unkempt clothes and complains a lot, but it is clear that she is never completely comfortable inhabiting this slap-dash character. When she blows up over one of Florence’s maddening idiosyncrasies, it seems more afterthought than impulse. Olive (like Oscar) is a character with the spontaneity of a runaway train. Wallace just doesn’t communicate that quality enough.

The obvious--casting Wallace as Florence and Worley as Olive--may have helped here. But then again, probably not. Felix and Oscar’s relationship was interesting. The same can’t be said for that of Florence and Olive.

Not all of the Grand’s “Odd Couple” is humdrum. Some giggles are provided by Jackie Joseph as the kindly, bubble-headed Vera, one of Olive’s Trivial Pursuit buddies, and by Kirk Thornton and David Correia as the affable and somewhat dim Costazuela brothers. But even these few moments are not nearly enough to salvage this misconceived, miscast production.

“The Odd Couple” continues through April 5 at the Grand Dinner Theatre, 1 Hotel Way, Anaheim. Information: (714) 772-7710.