In my high school’s production of “The Odd Couple,” I played Roy, one of slobby Oscar Madison’s poker buddies.

For the costume, my mother let me pick from among my father’s second-best suits and slightly frayed dress shirts, which worked for the character (I grandly believed) because Roy was an accountant and my father was a banker. No matter that I had to hitch the trousers with a belt and suspenders to make them stay up; I still got my laughs.

“His refrigerator’s been broken for two weeks,” ran one of my lines. “I saw milk standing in there that wasn’t even in the bottle.” Pow! The play was surefire.

That was in 1975; it had not taken long for “The Odd Couple” to percolate through the soil of American culture — from its 1965 premiere, to the 1968 movie adaptation, to the 1970 ABC sitcom and, in a final burst of glory, to Harriton High. By then its author, Neil Simon, was surefire too: In 1966 he had four hit shows on Broadway at once.