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Pattaya Players stage ‘The Odd Couple’

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Pattaya Players stage ‘The Odd Couple’

The cast of ‘The Odd Couple’.

Paul Strachan
Over the last year The Pattaya Players have been bringing a bit of culture to Fun City, slowly carving out a niche of like minded individuals with an interest in amateur dramatics and gaining the support and respect of the residents of this vibrant city.
‘The home of the Professional Amateurs’ is the tagline for this troupe of culture vultures and their latest production held on April 3-5 at the grand ballroom of the Amari, raised the bar in terms of concept, staging, acting and overall delivery.
The play was ‘The Odd Couple’, which many of you will remember, well if not the play, perhaps the movie or the classic TV series featuring Oscar Madison and Felix Unger. However this time it was the female version which was rewritten by the playwright Neil Simon where he switched the gender of the two leads, so Oscar became Olive and Felix became Florence.
Another change was not just in the venue but also the offer to the public, following on from the success of the Murder Mystery Dinners the Friday & Saturday night performances had a dinner option with an all inclusive price of just 1,000 baht, great value in today’s troubled times.
Adam Kuhl, who has done his fair share of direction before stepped up to masterfully direct the cast of eight on a purpose built set representing a New York 11th floor apartment.
Olive Madison brilliantly played by Debbie Cavanaugh last seen in A Christmas Carol and the shining star of the Pattaya Players, Clare Bryant, played Florence Unger. Their performances were simply incredible, not just in the vast amount of lines they had to learn, but in the way they both fleshed out their respective characters.
Olive is the messy one who spends her leisure time playing trivial pursuit with her friends where they get together, gossip, bitch and joke all in the midst of Olive’s apartment which is strewn with take away cartons, rubbish and magazines. Florence, immaculately attired, turns up late after her husband of fourteen years has ceremonially dumped her, Olive tells her she can move in, and so unfolds the story of these two very opposing personalities.
Chris Parsons managed to get in touch with his feminine side (not too much of a stretch) to play Olive’s friend Rene and Foo Smith played Sylvie. New to treading the boards was Kavita Lamba, who managed the huge challenge of playing the ditzy Vera and Janet Schaeffer played the frustrated cop Mickey, who along with Vera had some of the funniest lines.
The two male leads were hilarious as Ken Cavanaugh and Mike Pence (another new face to the Pattaya Players) played the Spanish brothers Jesus and Malolo respectively.
Their accents were spot on and their interaction with Florence and Olive was a delight to watch, filled with awkwardness, misunderstanding and an edgy undercurrent of lust.
All in all this was a brilliant reworking of the classic tale, a brave move for the Players to take on such a lengthy show, but one that paid off with lots of laughs and moments of introspection.
The Pattaya Players seems to be getting bigger and stronger, however with the transient nature of Pattaya, they are constantly in need of new blood, in the way of actors, directors & volunteers.
As the curtain came down on this performance, the audience were already penciling in the dates for the next production which will be held at La Dolce Vita restaurant at the end of July.
For more information go to www.pattayaplayers.org.

The two protagonists Olive and Florence go head to head.

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