In the 40 years since depressive Felix Ungar first drove America’s favorite slob Oscar Madison crazy with his obsessive neatness and devotion to cooking and clean ashtrays, “odd couple” has become such a part of our social vocabulary that one critic describes the 2004 play Trying (see review in this column) as “an Odd Couple for the Beltway crowd.”

Neil Simon’s original pair and their quartet of poker-playing buddies are back onstage through May 28 at Coronado Playhouse, directed by Keith A. Anderson.

It’s poker night, and Oscar (John Bridges) has done his usual as-needed housekeeping: He’s shoveled enough stuff off the table so Murray (Eric Hedberg) can deal and the guys can spend the next few hours winning, losing and arguing about who owes what to whom. Every other surface in Oscar’s living room is covered with clothes, old Chinese takeout cartons and similar detritus.

But one regular is missing – Felix (Bob Mutch) – and after awhile the guys wonder where he is. It seems Felix’s 12-year marriage is in the dumper. As cop and amateur shrink Murray puts it: “Twelve years doesn’t mean you’re a happy couple. It means you’re a long couple.”

Someone asks whether Felix has a girl.

“A girl?” says Murray, incredulous. “He wears a vest and galoshes.”

Finally Felix turns up, emotionally wasted and distracted. He immediately becomes extraordinarily fixated on Oscar’s 12th-story window.

What’s a guy to do about an obviously suicidal buddy? Move him in, of course; it’s lucky that the divorced Oscar is rattling around in an eight-room apartment alone. Now the practically insane Felix can drive Oscar nuts, too.

Rosemary King’s set is perfect, and Anderson has assembled a winning cast. Bridges has the right look and attitude for Oscar, and is the perfect foil for Mutch’s weep-at-the-drop-of-a-hat Felix, whose lone attempt at releasing anger (hurling a cup at the wall) injures his shoulder.

Hedberg is good as Murphy the cop, though since this play depends upon stereotypes, a New York accent would have served him well. In fact, Brian Scott Powers, funny as the very married Vinnie, is the only one of the guys to attempt a New York accent. Robert Shadbolt’s Speed and Marcus Allen Correia’s Roy complete the fine male cast.

Adding to the fun are Elizabeth Mander-Wilson and Pamela Rotta as Gwendolyn and Cecily, the British women upstairs.

It could be argued that the slob-vs.-neat-freak Odd Couple is a one-trick pony with an unconvincing ending. Still, Simon provides enough laughs in the interactions between these six guys (and the giggly Gwendolyn and Cecily) to maintain interest for the duration, and to make this one of Simon’s most successful plays.

Pull up a chair and kibitz on the game at Oscar’s. You’ll get your laugh quotient for the day, guaranteed.

The Odd Couple plays through May 28 at Coronado Playhouse. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m., with matinees on Sunday at 2:00 p.m. A Mother’s Day show and closing matinee brunch is available. For tickets, call (619) 435-4856 or visit www.coronadoplayhouse.com.

The stage is bare at Lamb’s Players Theatre until director Alex Dennison (Robert Smyth) strolls in, followed a few seconds later by his frantically efficient young assistant, Sally (Season Duffy) and stagehand Ernie (Patrick J. Duffy).

Alex isn’t thinking about theater; he’s thinking about murder as he asks Ernie to bring chairs for the reading of “a new play.” He sends Sally for coffee and Danishes for the actors, who begin to dribble in, along with producer Bella Lamb (K.B. Mercer).

Flashbacks establish that Alex’s lover, actress Monica Welles (Deborah Gilmour Smyth), died one year ago in a 10-story fall from her apartment after a less-than-stellar opening night. Was it murder?

Alex thinks so. After all, “Nobody commits suicide because of bad reviews,” he says. And as the actors leaf through their scripts, it becomes obvious that this is not a play but a collection of scenes designed to give each of them a motive.

Writers Richard Levinson and William Link have given us some of our most memorable television, including the series “Columbo” and “Murder, She Wrote.” Lynn Redgrave and Robert Preston starred in the original Rehearsal for Murder, which began life as a teleplay in 1982. The stage version, adapted by D.D. Brooke, plays through May 21, well directed by Robert Smyth.

Levinson and Link always gave us interesting characters, and this group is no exception. From the elegant and sophisticated Bella, who explains that she wears heels because “you have to set an example for the philistines,” to Sally, the bustling bumpkin from Maine, to actors Karen (Colleen Kollar) and Larry (Jon Lorenz), formerly a couple who now snipe at each other as only exes can, this gang is fun to watch, especially as the tension rises.

Will Alex “catch the conscience of the king” in this Hamlet-inspired play within a play? Maybe, maybe not, but Lamb’s has done such a fine job that you’ll be glad to go along for the ride.

Rehearsal for Murder plays through May 21 at Lamb’s Players Theatre in Coronado. Shows Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m. and Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m., with matinees Saturday at 4:00 p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 437-0600 or visit www.lambsplayers.org.

Irascible old Philadelphia blueblood Francis Biddle (Jonathan McMurtry) hires young Canadian-born Sarah Schorr (Christine Marie Brown) to help him with his memoirs and other correspondence in playwright Joanna McClelland Glass’ fact-based Trying, playing at the Cassius Carter Center Stage through May 21 and directed by Richard Seer.

The 81-year-old Biddle, who spent much of his life in public service, as U.S. solicitor general and attorney general and then as judge at the 1945 Nuremberg trials, needs help keeping up with correspondence requesting information based on his illustrious career.

Biddle’s tongue is as sharp as his mind once was – which, he points out, has caused several previous secretaries to flee screaming from the job.

He waves offstage. “The bathroom is that way,” he says. “If I ever cause it, that’s where you can go to cry.”

Sarah comes not from a patrician family but from the prairies of Saskatchewan. She is young, impressionable and willing to put up with Biddle’s unreliable memory and lack of tact, but draws the line at the verbal abuse to which he is prone to doling out. She informs him that in the event he makes her cry, she will sit right there and let him watch.

But Sarah is a good worker. Noting that people in Saskatchewan “said I was a bugger for work,” she wastes no time getting down to it.

“We’re going to be defeated by this paperwork unless we lace up the skates and hit the ice,” she says amiably, to his great (if patronizing) amusement.

Biddle is naturally grouchy. Being aware that the Grim Reaper is approaching does not help (he keeps reminding Sarah that “I will be 82 next year”), and neither does the poor grammar of others. At one point, he dictates a letter to his nephew on the uses of “bring” versus “take.”

Taped news snippets remind us of the turbulent social history of the first three-quarters of the 20th century, elaborated in occasionally clunky fashion by Biddle himself. But Trying is not about history; it’s about two utterly different and strong-willed people learning to get along with each other.

Biddle worries about Sarah touching the heater or his person (he recoils, aghast, when she offers to rub Bengay into his arthritic knuckles). Sarah, the young wife, has her own problems, which eventually bring on the tears. These are juicy, emotionally rich roles requiring heavy use of nonverbal communication.

Seer has found the right actors for this effort. McMurtry could play this role for its inherent sadness or for the inescapable comedy of putting these two near-opposites in a room. He and director Seer intelligently opt for a combination, difficult to pull off but more satisfying when it works. Here it does, and the bite of Biddle’s defensive jibes moderates along with the visible weakening of his body.

Brown is spectacular as her Sarah gingerly navigates a path around Biddle’s wall of sadness and fear masked by thoughtless comments. Biddle calls Sarah “the most trying individual” he has ever met; she feels the same way about him. Yet somehow, every morning they come together to try again.

Trying is a funny, fascinating and touching piece of theater, not in the least trying.

Trying plays through May 21 at the Old Globe Theatre’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage. Shows Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. and Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m., with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 23-GLOBE or visit www.theoldglobe.org.