All performance photos in this article were taken by the late, great Lyle Fodnes. He really was everywhere.
Say, did I ever tell you that I played fussy-photographer-with-sinus-condition Felix Ungar on the off-off-off-off-Broadway stage? Well, you probably need to add about 306 more “off”s in there. But I co-starred with my pal Dangerous Dave Kuskie in the Main Street Players production of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple.” And it was ten years ago today! Holy mackerel!
Dave played slovenly sportswriter Oscar Madison and was also the director of the show. Our amazing cast also included the “poker buddies”: Mike Fell as Vinnie, Mike Glesinger as Murray the Cop, Steven Crabb as Roy, and Kent Bleisch as Speed; and Elaine Connelly Bleisch and Angela O’Leary as The Pigeon Sisters.
So, let me tell you a secret about me: I’m not an actor. I’ve been in, I dunno, 147 Main Street Players productions but I’m just a hammy radio announcer. I figured that out in 1991 when I took an acting class as an elective in community college. Most of the people in the class were theatre majors and they…well, you know…knew what the hell they were doing. The final project had us pairing up in teams to do two-person scenes. I got paired up with probably the only other non-theatre major in the class. We decided to do a scene from “The Odd Couple”, because we knew the characters. The TV series was heavy in reruns back then and it was easy material to work with. So we did the final confrontational scene where Felix and Oscar finally lose it and get real with each other, chasing each other around the apartment and arguing until Felix declares he’s leaving, and Oscar is furious at the guilt trip being laid on him. It’s a great scene.
Fast forward to 15 years later, give or take. For a Main Street Players variety show, I suggested to my pal Professor Dustin Harris that we do this scene for our portion of the show. It went quite well. Another five years or so after that, Dave volunteered to act and direct in a full production of the play. And we had another variety show on the schedule, so Dave and I decided to start working that final big scene first so we could do it in the variety show as a promotional tool for the play. The variety show performance had some issues…but as the old saying goes, “terrible performance of one scene at a variety show, great performance of the entire play months later.” (Some of these theater tropes are better known than others.)
And just to restate: I’ve performed the same scene with three different actors six times. I think if you dragged my carcass on stage and gave me an Oscar who knew his lines, I would be able to pluck out my Felix lines from the recesses of my brain.
“That’s not spaghetti, it’s linguini!”
“Oscar! I’d like you to take a phenibarbitol/”
“I may be a neurotic nut but you’re crazy!”
“What’s the matter, Oscar? Can’t cope with a little GUILT feelings?”
It’s one thing to memorize one scene. It’s another to memorize the whole show. Getting the lines down is something that usually happens for me very late in the game. But there were huge sections of “The Odd Couple” that were just Dave and me on stage. I think that made both of us the good kind of nervous. And so I made a greater effort, as I know Dave did, to memorize scenes earlier in the process.
Our Poker Buddies were hilarious. Steven Crabb and Kent Bleisch were Main Street Players regulars and they inhabited their characters beautifully. The two Mikes (Glesinger and Fell) did a great job as well–and Gles did this play during basketball season, which stuns me. Three nights or more of basketball play by play plus at least one rehearsal each week, more as we got closer to show date…Gles gets the MVP for not keeling over during one of the performances!
Elaine Connelly Bleisch and Angela O’Leary were marvelous as Cecily and Gwendolyn Pigeon, two girls from Oscar’s apartment building who stop by for an evening with the boys only to be brought to tears by Felix’s marriage woes. This was an unusual show for Elaine, who has been the Main Street Players director-in-residence (house director? I don’t know what the right term is) for over twenty years.
I was very proud of the show, and I know Dangeresque was over the moon with his stage directorial debut. The only real hiccup was on night one when I went to leave the apartment and the door stuck. But then, I’ve had my problems with doors in these plays. I once walked a judge into the hall closet instead of out the front door. But see, that’s what I mean about me not being an actor. Real actors know the difference between the front door and the hall closet. But in spite of this I still get to be in plays. It’s one of those social-human-type-engagement things I have missed but hopefully will not miss too much longer.
Still hoping for Dave and me in “The Sunshine Boys” in 20 or 30 years.