With rehearsals well and truly underway, the Melbourne season set to open on 18 May at the Comedy Theatre and a Sydney season set to commence at the Theatre Royal on 27 June – everything appears to be going smoothly for Crossroads Live’s Australian production of The Odd Couple. In fact, things seem to be going so well that the producers, citing “huge demand”, have put the final performances in Sydney on pre-sale, up to 28 July 2024. While pre-sales are currently active, tickets will go on general public sale this Friday 10 May 2024.
The production features Shane Jacobson and Todd McKenney as the main characters, Oscar and Felix. The two actors, who have collaborated on many theatrical projects over the years, very much embody the contrasting personalities of their characters, and I am excited to see how this dynamic comes out in their roles.
Joining Shane and Todd will be stage and screen stars Lucy Durack (Legally Blonde, Upper Middle Bogan) and Penny McNamee (Home and Away, City of Angels) as Cecily Pigeon and Gwendolyn Pigeon, the giggly pair of English sisters who live upstairs from Oscar. The poker loving friends of Oscar will be played by John Batchelor (Sea Patrol, Red Dog), Laurence Coy (Ladies in Black, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest), Jamie Oxenbould (Chapter Two, Last of the Red Hot Lovers) and Anthony Taufa (Black is the New White, A Christmas Carol), with Julia Ohannessian (Hamlet, Accidental Death of an Anarchist), Berynn Schwerdt (The Crucible, Much Ado About Nothing) and Hayden Spencer (Deadloch, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) as understudies.
The Odd Couple is directed by Mark Kilmurry, Artistic Director of the Ensemble Theatre, and is produced by John Frost for Crossroads Live.
Two suddenly single pals — a sloppy sportswriter and a fastidious news writer — strain their friendship by becoming roommates and unconsciously repeating the same mistakes they made in the marriages they just left. Neurotic and neat freak Felix Ungar is thrown out by his wife, and moves in with his slovenly friend Oscar Madison. The characteristics that drove each of them to leave their wives soon have them at each other’s throats in this classic comedy.
