Oscar and Felix are back, demonstrating once again that opposites are fun to watch onstage but hell to live with.

It’s poker night at Oscar’s place, and everybody’s there but Felix (Douglas Davis). Murray the cop (Michael Grant Hall) deals – slowly – while Vinnie (Robert DeLillo) worries about the time (his wife has him on a short leash). Roy (Joe Palen) wants something to eat, and Speed (Toni Billante) just waits for the deal.

Divorced sportswriter Oscar (Randall Hickman) enters with a choice of green or brown sandwiches (“It’s either very new cheese or very old meat.”) and soon the game begins.

Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple plays through March 25 at the Broadway Theater in Vista, directed by Randall Hickman and starring Hickman as Oscar and Broadway Theater partner Douglas Davis as Felix.

But this play isn’t about poker, it’s about depression, failed marriages, messy housekeeping and compromise. But mostly, it’s about friendship – the kind that will move Oscar, the big, lumbering, lovable slob to invite Felix, the suicidal and prissy little dust-rag queen to share his messy apartment after Felix’s wife tosses him out.

Of course, chaos ensues (along with hilarity for the audience), especially when the Pigeon sisters upstairs (Suzanne Oswald and Michelle Panek) come down for dinner, setting up a cute if not especially believable ending.

Hickman has assembled a fine and talented cast. He and Davis are terrific as the mismatched roommates, coexisting on Davis’ wonderfully messy set. The other poker buddies are also excellent, but the girls bring on the most laughs with their outrageous outfits and giggly demeanor.

Simon has achieved huge success portraying familiar middle-class characters. The Odd Couple is no exception; it is also quite possibly his best play. This “odd couple” is neither odd nor particularly unusual. We all know these people (some of us are these people). Maybe that’s why we like to watch them.

The Odd Couple plays through March 25 at the Broadway Theater in Vista.

Shows Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m.

For tickets, call 760-806-7905 or visit http://www.premiereforkids.com/ticket_order.htm.

I love it when brash young playwrights are willing to try crazy or risky things.

Evan Smith’s The Uneasy Chair is a spoof of Victorian England’s legal system and conceits, juxtaposing Victorian style florid dialogue (in which one must be careful not to say what is on one’s mind) with modern asides to the audience revealing exactly that. The play is in its West Coast premiere running through March 25 at North Coast Repertory Theatre, directed by Brendon Fox.

The plot, borrowed at least in part from Dickens, chronicles the rocky relationship between Captain Josiah Wickett (Robert Grossman) and boarding- house proprietress Miss Amelia Pickles (Lynne Griffin). This is not a marriage made in heaven. It’s not a marriage at all, in fact, until Miss Pickles sues Mr. Wickett for breach of promise. (Sound a bit like a Pickwick Papers plot point?)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Pickles and Wickett have a niece (the scheming Alexandrina Crosbie, played by Rhianna Basore) and nephew (John Darlington, played by Christopher M. Williams) who figure into the plot as well.

A letter from the captain to Alexandrina asking about her interest in Darlington is couched so quaintly that Pickles thinks the captain wants to marry her, and the misunderstanding escalates to the courtroom where the multitalented Craig Huisenga plays attorney for each side in turn. (Huisenga also plays several other roles quite hilariously.)

I love the idea of The Uneasy Chair, and you’ve got to give Smith audacity points for taking on that time period and doing it so successfully. Marty Burnett’s versatile set and Paloma H. Young’s costumes help immensely.

There’s some fine directing and acting here, too. Miss Pickles and the captain are characters who really should live alone; Smith’s script and the actors’ abilities demonstrate this to great effect. Grossman, who has never been less than pitch perfect, continues his streak with an irresistible, irascible interpretation – especially amusing when the captain registers some annoyance with his bride’s “fierce bombardment of solicitude.”

Griffin, too, is a redoubtable presence; starchy, difficult, her Pickles is unimpressed with the gender difference in the wedding vows: “I had forgotten about ‘obey.’ There is no symmetry between ‘cherish’ and ‘obey.’”

Basore and Williams turn in fine performances as well, and I can’t help noting how lovely it is to see the older couple as stars of this vehicle and the young’uns playing supporting roles.

The Uneasy Chair has much to recommend, but the premise seems a bit thin for a full-length play. Archness only goes so far before it begins to annoy. And the tone shift of the final third of the play (which finds the couple in their dotage) seems either tacked on or belonging to another play, another plot. An hour and a half of fluff running smack into the miseries of age doesn’t quite work.

The Uneasy Chair plays through March 25 at North Coast Repertory Theatre.

Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m.; select Wednesday evenings at 7 p.m.; and Saturday matinees at 2 p.m.

For tickets, call 858-481-1055 or visit www.northcoastrep.org.

You don’t have to be near the ocean to see sharks. You’ll find the two-legged variety in David Mamet’s horrifyingly realistic Glengarry Glen Ross, on the boards through March 18 at 6th@Penn Theatre. Jerry Pilato directs.

Glengarry Glen Ross takes place in a sleazebag Chicago real estate office where, as usual in business, “them that has, gets.” The good customer leads – penuriously dispensed by office manager John Williamson (Ash Fulk) – go to the top producers, making it increasingly difficult for others to get “on the board” and compete for the monthly prize – a new Cadillac. The current top dog is Ricky Roma (Jonathan Sachs), a manipulative but silver-tongued devil who plays on the guilt, greed and dreams of his victims as he gets them to sign on the dotted line for questionable property in Florida.

At the bottom of the totem pole is the aging Shelly Levene (Jonathan Dunn-Rankin), stuck in a dry selling patch and perhaps burned out as well. Shelly pleads, begs, even tries to bribe John for a couple of decent leads to no avail.

In between are the other bottom feeders: Dave Moss (Dale Morris), loud, vulgar and funny, and George Aaronow (Haig Koshkarian), fairly quiet for a salesman, especially in this shark tank. Joey Georges plays James Lingk, Roma’s latest mark, who has a change of heart about that contract he signed.

Mamet has fashioned this play as both exposé and mystery – an office break-in and the theft of some contracts and the new leads brings the cop Baylen (B.J. Peterson) to interview everyone, causing annoyance and bringing more strings of invective from the salesmen.

An indictment of capitalism, or at least of the extreme form that creates such ethically challenged monsters as these, Mamet overstates his case for effect – and it works. Mamet has a way of burrowing into the working-class psyche; he makes his points with the vulgarity of street language (if you can’t stand the f-word, skip this play) and with his own personal Mametspeak – a rapid-fire, staccato kind of dialogue in which characters repeat and talk over each other in antiphonal exchanges that rise and fall in quantitative output like machines that start, stop and sputter.

These are not guys you’d want to have coffee with, much less buy worthless property from, but Sachs is terrific as the wondrously conscienceless Roma, able to make a swamp sound like Shangri-la. Morris is the best I’ve ever seen him as Moss. Dunn-Rankin is convincing as the onetime “Levene the Machine,” and Fulk is properly obnoxious as John.

Glengarry Glen Ross won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. If you’ve never seen it, here’s your chance.

Glengarry Glen Ross plays through March 18 at 6th@Penn Theatre.

Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m.

For tickets, call 619-688-9210 or visit www.6thatpenn.com.