The Odd Couple

Universally acclaimed as one of the funniest American plays ever written, Neil Simon reportedly based the play on his friend Mel Brooks who lived with Speed Vogel after separating from his first wife.  Vogel later wrote that Brooks had insomnia, “a brushstroke of paranoia,” and “a blood-sugar problem that kept us a scintilla away from insanity.”

In the play, compulsive neatnik Felix Unger is thrown out of his house by his divorce-bound wife. and gravitates to the apartment of his best friend, incorrigibly sloppy sportswriter Oscar Madison. Worried that Felix will try something desperate, Oscar, himself in the process of being divorced by his wife, invites Felix to move in with him. Within a few days, this mismatched pair is on the verge of mutual murder: Felix cannot abide Oscar’s slovenliness, while Oscar is driven insane by Felix’s obsession with cleanliness.