NY Theatre

New York Theatre Company

It pays to keep your eyes peeled at the new revival of “The Odd Couple,” which opened Thursday night on Broadway, because some of the funniest moments occur in silence.

There’s Matthew Broderick, playing neat freak Felix Unger, holding a soup ladle under the chin of Nathan Lane, who portrays divorced slob Oscar Madison, while he munches an hors d’oeuvre.

And Broderick’s parade through Oscar’s living room as he continuously sprays a can of air freshener.

There also are plenty of funny lines in the 1965 play by Neil Simon, although it is not the laugh riot that first united Lane and Broderick on a Broadway stage:Mel Brooks’”The Producers” in 2001.

In fact, both actors seem somewhat subdued in these roles as mismatched friends thrown together by Felix’s pending divorce.

Though Oscar obviously needs a “wife” to disinfect the apartment and keep him on a budget, it’s clear that almost anyone would find it difficult to live with Felix, a needy hypochondriac who’s happy to cook and clean but also wants stimulating conversation.

“The Odd Couple” does have an excellent supporting cast, which includes Brad Garrett (TV’s “Everybody Loves Raymond”) as the poker-playing cop Murphy as well as Rob Bartlett (radio’s “Imus in the Morning”) and Lee Wilkow (”Kiss Me, Kate”)

When the curtain goes up on the revival of “The Odd Couple,” Neil Simon’s 1965 comedy, at the Brooks Atkinson Theater, you see the real stars of the production - Rob Bartlett, Brad Garrett and Lee Wilkof - playing a heated game of poker When the curtain goes up on the revival of “The Odd Couple,” Neil Simon’s 1965 comedy, at the Brooks Atkinson Theater, you see the real stars of the production - Rob Bartlett, Brad Garrett and Lee Wilkof - playing a heated game of poker. Unless you have spent the last year in Lhasa, you know that the reason for this revival was to reteam Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick of “The Producers” in the roles of the slob Oscar and the finicky Felix, forced to become roommates by their impending divorces.

Who Has the Rights

To ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’?

” ‘Good job,’ ” said NATHAN LANE, quoting KATHLEEN TURNER as she walked away after a brief conversation at the opening night party for “The Odd Couple.” “That means she hated it.”

Oh, Mr. Lane, it matters not. The limited run of NEIL SIMON’s and MATTHEW BRODERICK’s and Mr. Lane’s “The Odd Couple,” which opened on Thursday at the Brooks Atkinson Theater, sold out before it opened, to the tune of more than $21 million. No one’s opinion, no matter how long it has been sautéed in a reduction of passive-aggression, can change that! (In all fairness, we didn’t hear Ms. Turner; she might have meant every word. But, hey, that wouldn’t make a lick of difference on the bottom line either.)

Now, from every corner of Broadway, from every wood-paneled office and dimly-lighted bar, from the red-lipped visages at Sardi’s and the lurkers in the dirty bookstores, there comes an idea for a buddy revival.

“I’m bringing Lane and Broderick back together in ‘Waiting for Godot!’ ” shouts a mustachioed fellow from a corner table at JOE ALLEN.

” ‘My Dinner with Andre!’ ” cries a woman pushing a grocery cart on 38th Street.

” ‘Last Tango in Paris!’ ”

” ‘Live with Regis and Kelly!’ ”

Truly, it has become everyone’s favorite sport.

“They could do anything together,” TINA BROWN said at the party at the Marriott Marquis. “I think they can even do ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ and be great.”

There are actually three brothers, but details, details! Mr. Lane is versatile enough to play both DMITRI and IVAN, and ROSIE O’DONNELL is a no-brainer for the GRAND INQUISITOR.

What other opening night party would bring out JERRY SEINFELD, MARTIN SHORT, REGIS PHILBIN, DORIS ROBERTS and BRAD GARRETT (who, to be fair, is actually in the play)?

SARAH JESSICA PARKER is, obviously, a guarantee.

But we have digressed for too long. Let us return to Mr. Lane, who was working his way back from the bar, punctuating his conversation with thank-you hand signals and eyebrow-raises to passing well-wishers.

“You get the impression sometime that because it’s sold out and it’s sold so many tickets,” Mr. Lane was saying, “it was as if we planned a sort of get-rich-quick scheme. When it was really about just wanting to do the play.

“I hope people realize,” he continued. “We wanted to do the best version of the play we could do. That was our intention. Not, you know, riding the gravy train.”

He smiled.

“And we don’t make as much money as they say anyway.”

Let that be a lesson, Greed-Blinded Reader. The show’s the thing.

And so we will close out with a conversation with MARC SHAIMAN, who composed the score for this production, his first score for a play that did not have lyrics. That does not mean he did not have some in mind.

“Every score I ever wrote,” Mr. Shaiman said, “I have a lyric to it.”

Well give us a line or two.

He looked down at the carpet and gathered his thoughts. And then, snapping: “Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick sure bring in the crowd!/When producers hire them they sure don’t wear no shroud!”

Then he stopped.

“I never got past that.”

He Wasn’t Referring

To the Scent, You Mean

“740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building,” a book by MICHAEL GROSS, is about a place in Manhattan that has housed many very rich and powerful people, sort of like a ghetto, but with a doorman. We went to a party for the book last week at Lotus where we saw NICOLE MILLER, KIM TAIPALE, TIFFANY DUBIN and MARIO BUATTA and learned the secrets of the moneyed classes.

“My grandfather called those buildings where everybody knows everybody else ‘riding academies,’ ” said DANA STUBGEN, a niece of the longtime resident ENID HAUPT, who died last week. “He meant there was lots of sex. Isn’t that funny?”

Now you know.

The York Theatre Company’s upcoming production of Is There Life after High School? — part of the company’s acclaimed “Musicals in Mufti” series — will feature one new song penned by composer-lyricist Craig Carnelia.

Entitled “School Song,” the tune was not part of the original Broadway mounting but will be heard during the York performances Nov. 4-6. About the upcoming production, composer Carnelia said in a statement, “The Mufti production will recapture the spirit that was lost on the way to Broadway in ‘82. This show is streamlined and condensed from two acts to one.” Book writer Jeffrey Kindley added, “High school today may look different, but the issues are still the same. There will always be basic hopes and fears that people have from the ages of 14 to 18.”

Heading the company of the Carnelia (score)-Kindley (book) musical will be Stephanie Bast, Jed Cohen, Jeffrey Doornbos, Chris Fuller, Stacie Morgain Lewis, Garret Long, Holly Davis, Greg Roderick and Ceasar Samayoa. The musical, first seen on Broadway in 1982, will be directed by composer-lyricist Carnelia with musical direction by Bryan Perri. Performance dates are Nov. 4 at 8 PM, Nov. 5 at 2:30 and 8 PM and Nov. 6 at 2:30 and 7:30 PM.

Is There Life after High School, according to press notes, “is a funny yet bittersweet musical about the love/hate relationship that most adults have with their memories of high school. Were you the captain of the football team or head cheerleader? President of the Chess Club? The only kid who didn’t have a prom date? Remember winning or losing the class election, spending the lunch hour alone in the cafeteria, or catching the touchdown pass?”

The “Musicals in Mufti” series presents musicals in staged concert settings. “Mufti” means “in street clothes, without the usual trappings.”

The York Theatre Company is located at 619 Lexington Avenue at the corner of 54th Street. Tickets for the “Mufti” productions are priced at $40 and can be purchased by calling (212) 868-4444 or by visiting www.smarttix.com. For more information, go to www.yorktheatre.org.

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Other offerings in the 2005-2006 “Mufti” season will include Jeff Hochhauser and Bob Johnston’s Theda Bara and the Frontier Rabbi and the New York premiere of Tom Jones, Harvey Schmidt and Elizabeth Diggs’ Mirette. The York Theatre Company’s season will also feature two fully produced mainstage productions, two workshops and a family-friendly production.

Charles Fuller’s “A Soldier’s Play,” later made into the 1984 movie “A Soldier’s Story,” with the young Denzel Washington, is a good mystery set against the background of the segregated Army during World War II.

The excellent cast of the revival at the off-Broadway Second Stage Theater keeps the audience guessing who might have killed Sgt. Waters, played by James McDaniel (TV’s “NYPD Blue”).

Taye Diggs (”Wicked,”"Rent,” TV’s “Kevin Hill”) plays Capt. Davenport, a black lawyer sent to the base in Louisiana to investigate the case, which is a bit too hot for the white officers to handle.

Davenport has to fight for the right to determine his own course even as he develops the evidence by interviewing and reinterviewing the men of Waters’ unit, which functioned mostly as a baseball team.

Among the cast standouts are Anthony Mackie, almost unrecognizable from his recent starring role in “McReele”off-Broadway, and Mike Colter as Pvt. C.J. Memphis, beloved by other members of the unit though he apparently failed to meet Sgt. Waters’ standards.

The show is a treat, especially for those who don’t know or remember the ending.