That Odd Couple
Sunday, February 16, 2014
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| The Odd Couple, Raúl & Alex in Veracruz, 1964 |
Moving from one city in one country to another, a few times, is a sure way of leaving one with blanks in events that happen in those places when one has moved on. I really never knew who Neil Simon was until recently.
While I was in Buenos Aires when Evita died I was not there
when Perón was brought down.
I lived in Mexico City when Pat Nixon came to our school, was in Austin during the failed Bay of Pigs but was back in Mexico City and in a bus
when I found out President Kennedy had been assassinated.
It was then, in the
early 60s that I first met Raúl Guerrero Montemayor who was 12 years older than
I was. He was born, perhaps in the United States
or in Mexico.
None of us who ever knew him were quite sure where. But we did know that he had
a Filipino heritage, spoke 10 languages and looked very much like one of the
sons that the first president of the Philippines, Manuel L. Quézon,
might have had.
He was a friend of my
favourite uncle Don Luís Miranda.
It was Raúl who
educated me on the wonder of European films and good literature. It was Raúl
who drove me in his VW to Veracruz
for my first adult glimpse of the sea and it smells.
Most of us
suspected Raúl was a closet gay. Being gay in those days was tough in a macho
society. Raúl thus had a fondness for falling in love with women who were
always leaving town at the airport.
If I happened to spend
the night at his Zona Rosa apartment, after a late night of Antonioni and
coffee at the Kineret Café one of my cousins warned me to “make sure you sleep
with a book between your bum and your pijama pants.”
I can attest here that
Raúl was always a gentleman and when he died January 9, 2013, I knew I had lost
a best friend and an important influence in making me the man I am today.
Before I married my
Rosemary in 1968 I had been staying in Raúl’s apartment. Having returned from
my military service in Argentina
in 1967 Raúl offered his apartment and helped me get a job teaching English.
We saw more European
films, discussed philosophy, listened to Erik Satie and live a mutual life of
bachelorhood before I met Rosemary and whom if I do remember might have bedded
in Raúl’s loft which is where I slept.
It was a shock, but a
pleasant one to have seen Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, with Rosemary, on its
opening performance at the Art Club’s Stanley Industrial Alliance Theatre on
January 29.
Consider that I may have
been the only person that evening who had never seen any kind of Odd Couple, be
it on TV or in a film. It was virgin territory for me.
Listening to Sound
Designer Murray Price’s mood music (all 60s jazz ) of the 60s and close to the
writing of the play and its inaugural run in 1965 in Broadway immediately took
me back to my mid 60s and my love for the West Coast Jazz of California and the
cool jazz of Miles Davis.
There are those who
see the two women in the play Gwendolyn Pigeon and Cecily Pigeon (beautifully
played by Sasa Brown and Kate Dion-Richard) are there so that theatre goers of
the 60s would not read some sort of gay interplay between Felix Unger (played
by Robert Moloney) and Oscar Madison (Andrew McNee). All the men in this play
and particularly as peformed by the cast including Josh Drebit (Speed) Joel Wirkkunen
(Murray) and
Alec Willows (Roy) give no hint of gay shenanigans. And yet for me it did not
make a difference one way or another. It is a play about the beautiful intimacy (its ups and downs) that male friends share.
I enjoyed John Murphy’s
take, Simon’s humor was all there. Set Designer David Roberts and Costume
Designer Barbara Clayden, made sure that everything was right, from the stereo on
a shelf to the three circular bladed razor that Oscar Madison uses to spruce up
for the visit by the two Pigeon sisters.
The Odd Couple to me
was nostalgic romp in my past that made me appreciate how I got to be where I
am. Now if I could only figure out if I was Felix or Oscar!
