The lights go off. Soon after the Minor Theater at the Alumnae Building lights up, five "men" appear on stage playing a poker game. Dressed in men's clothes, with their long hair covered up with a wig, these five actresses, or actually a total of six characters, finely act out each distinctive character as male. Whispers, such as "I love that character" or "He's so good!" is often heard from the audience.
This is BEINGS's (English-language theater group of Ewha Womans University, English Department) 66th annual production, "The Odd Couple," written by Neil Simon.
The story is about how two best friends, Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, become estranged as Felix moves into Oscar's apartment after his separation from his wife. Neat and fussy Felix and the slob Oscar do not get along well as roommates and eventually give up on each other. Trivial matters build up, soon leading them to have a big fight. But in the end, they make up and agree on the fact that even best friends sometimes make the worst of roommates.
Throughout the play, there were numerous scenes that made the audience roar with laughter. There was a scene where Oscar invited two beautiful women to have dinner with at his apartment. Nothing was strange about this except the fact that these ladies were actually men dressed in lady's clothes; they were two male students who were cast from Yonsei University. The other time the play left people laughing hilariously was in a scene where Felix and Oscar were giving each other the silent treatment after a big fight and suddenly Felix blurted out, "iren" you going to talk to me?" in a Korean dialect. After this, the rest of the play proceeded in Korean.
Adding an entertaining and creative flavor to the production, the students who tidied up the stage for the next scene during the intermission were all dressed in the same clothes and wearing the same glasses as the character Felix.
The curtains went down with the same scene with which the play began: "men" playing a poker game and the audience giving a big round of applause signaling BEINGS's successful 66th production.
Composed mostly of English majors, but open to all students interested in theater, BEINGS branched out from earlier performances that focused on English literature giants like Shakespeare. "When people think about English plays, they tend to think of them as difficult and boring. We want to let people know that there are many interesting plays. That is one of the reasons why we are staging contemporary plays," says Jung Kee-on (English Lang. & Lit., 4), PR manager of BEINGS. Present at the play was "Seoul Players," an amateur English theater group in Korea which is composed of native speakers. They were quoted as saying that they were very impressed with the production.