The Wilde Theatre Company pulls open its first curtain tonight with an adaptation of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, a spot-on choice of a premiere performance for the English-language troupe.
The play stars Wilde Theatre Company co-founder David Young as the cigar-smoking, poker-playing Oscar and Jacques Fouche is his fussy friend Felix.
Oscar is a young sports writer living in a spacious five-room flat in North London. Felix is a BBC reporter and actor who is dumped by his boyfriend of seven years and starts a new life under Oscar's roof.
Audiences familiar with Simon's script will quickly notice exactly where Wilde Theatre Company's adaptation departs from the original.
"The biggest differences are that it takes place in London instead of New York and that Felix is gay," Young said.
The first of these differences is a technical issue, given Young's Irish brogue and Frouche's English accents. The second might be chalked up to the company's credo to produce theater that looks at multi-cultural themes and issues.
"We wanted to update the material and make it more [appealing] to a younger Taipei audience," said Wilde's other founder and director of the current production, Barbara
Coughlin.
"Having studied the play and placed it in a modern context we were unafraid and confident to interpret Felix as an out gay man in today's society. It also seemed more feasible that two 20-somethings would not be married with children as in the original play."
Coughlin and Young, founded Wilde Theatre Company in March of this year. They are, in their words, "passionate and committed to theater and concerned by the lack of public performance found in Taipei."
Though The Odd Couple is being staged in the pub-cum-performance space Chocolate and Love, the company hopes to find future audiences -- and actors -- in both the foreign and local communities, using the arts as a kind of outreach program.
English language and literature are both great tools to assist non native speakers in their learning and appreciation of Western tradition and culture," they write in the company's literature.
Auditions for upcoming performances, including a production of Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, will be held throughout September. Contact wildetheatre@gmail.com for details.
Wilde Theatre Company's production of Neil Simon's Odd Couple runs tonight through Sunday and again next Friday, Aug. 12 to Sunday, Aug. 14 at Chocolate and Love. Tickets cost NT$400 and are available at the door. Seating is limited and audiences are advised to arrive early. All performances begin at 7pm. Chocolate and Love is located at 148, Xinyi Rd, Sec 4, Taipei (
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