The XX Factor

A Very Brief History of Women-Led Reboots of Beloved but Mediocre Classics

Gender-flipping playwright Neil Simon, photographed in 2006.

Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

Two more boldfaced names have been added to the cast of the female Ocean’s Eleven reboot that was first announced last fall: According to Jezebel, Helena Bonham Carter and Mindy Kaling have now signed on, joining Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett on the forthcoming heist caper. Between this news and the swelling publicity campaign for the controversial women-led Ghostbusters movie before its July 15 release, America may be sick of women-led franchise reboots even before the first one hits the screen.

Of course, these ensemble movies aren’t the first time a high-profile cultural artifact has flipped its gender script. Back in 1985, 20 years after The Odd Couple’s Broadway premiere, author Neil Simon returned to the Great White Way with what theatrical publisher Samuel French calls The Odd Couple (Female Version). In TOC(FV)’s Broadway bow, Florence Ungar (formerly Felix) was played by Sally Struthers, and Olive Madison (ne Oscar) was played by Rita Moreno, though the performance did not contribute to her EGOT. Upstairs neighbors the Pigeon sisters became the Costazuela brothers, allowing Tony Shalhoub to make his Broadway debut as Jesus Costazuela. In a sad nod to the 1980s, the opening act’s poker game became a hotly contested evening of Trivial Pursuit.

It was the loss of the poker game, which he considered “the sacred heart and soul of the evening,” that particularly irked New York Times critic Walter Kerr. “No one plays Trivial Pursuit with the intensity, the fervor, the very savagery that men can bring to an evening of poker,” he claimed. And while it was funny to see Felix tidying up after his companions at the card table, Kerr wrote, dubiously, “[W]e are still living in a late macho society which imagines that all women are born housekeepers, and watching Florence clean the ashtrays seems merely natural.”

Kerr believed Simon had updated his classic play “because he figured the plot would function just as sturdily as it always had while the sex change would open up a whole new barrel of jokes.” Perhaps—though it seems just as likely that Simon also saw it as a canny way to drive more licensed productions of his play, since community theaters traditionally find themselves with a surplus of actresses seeking roles. Indeed, according to Samuel French, at least 25 productions of The Odd Couple (Female Version) will be staged this year, in venues as varied as White Rock, British Columbia; the heart of Midlothian, Scotland; and Holstein, Iowa.