[NEohioPAL] Review of "The Sunshine Boys" at Porthouse Theatre

[Bob Abelman]

Not enough sunset in Porthouse's 'Sunshine Boys'

 

Bob Abelman

 

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times,

The Morning Journal, Geauga Times Courier

Member, American Theatre Critics Association 

 

This review will appear in the News-Herald 7/15/11

 

Theater requires its audience to suspend disbelief.  After all, performers are engaged in pretense and we are expected to cut them some slack and accept what is being offered as our reality for the evening.

 

The Porthouse Theatre production of the comedy The Sunshine Boys asks a lot along these lines.

 

It asks that we believe it is winter in New York City despite the summer swelter and insistent chirping of Cuyahoga Valley National Park birds that fill the pavilion performance space.

 

It asks that we transport ourselves back to the 1970s by way of leisure suits and dated references.

 

And, most of all, it asks that we accept two actors too young for the roles of old vaudeville stars long into retirement.   

 

Fortunately, the humidity and the sparrows eventually fade with the sunset and the two actors, George Roth and Marc Moritz, happen to be blessed with Borsht in their blood and old, funny Jewish men in their souls.  It does not take long for suspension of disbelief to kick in and for the audience to move with the rhythms of this play as delivered by these extraordinarily talented performers.  

 

The Sunshine Boys is a portrait of two men for whom comedy is a religion, comic timing is divine, and the cadence of a lifetime of professional burlesque is imprinted in everything they say and do.  Willie Clark (Roth) and Al Lewis (Moritz), formerly the comedy team of Lewis and Clark, are still each other's straight-men despite having not seen or spoken to each other in 11 years after a long career in which they never got along.  They are reunited for a TV special by Willie's perpetually aggravated nephew and agent, Ben (a likable Ryan Zarecki).

 

As he does in all of his plays, playwright Neil Simon provides ample opportunity for the punching of one-liners and the presentation of jokes so obvious in their set up that their eventual delivery is comic relief.  

 

And, as is also typical of Simon's comedy, there is an undercurrent of significance.  In The Sunshine Boys we see comedy as a survival strategy for two forgotten men-true masters of a lost art-who have lived the better part of their lives and, clearly, the best part of their lives, in the limelight.  With each other.

 

In fact, it is the cadence of comedy and the undercurrent of significance that makes or breaks a production of this play.  Without them both, there is an awful lot of conflict and rancor in what these two men-particularly Willie-have to say to and shout at each other after 11 years. 

 

It is here that this production falls short.  

 

Despite their best facsimile of the frailty experienced by septuagenarians, Roth and Moritz can't conceal the physical and emotional energy imbued in their younger selves. No shaved head or powered hair can conger the authenticity that only age can bring to the play's back story and the characters' state of mind.   

 

After one of his many rants, Willie notes how hostility can be a vitalizing force, but the vitality in this production does not spring from that well.  As a result, much of the pathos written into Willie's tirades and Al's reception of them are left in the script.  

 

One exception is a brief scene between a convalescing Willie, who has fallen ill during the dress rehearsal of the TV special, and his take-no-guff nurse, who is played brilliantly by Lenne Snively.  Their banter is both very funny and understatedly poignant, and calls attention to what is missing elsewhere in the production. 

 

Of course, what is left in this production is all that is funny in this play-and there is plenty, particularly the dress rehearsal scene, which is marvelously performed by Roth and Moritz.

 

The humor is nicely facilitated by the quick pace of director Rohn Thomas' staging and the ambiance created by Cheri Prough DeVol's set design.  She appropriately frames the performers in an old fashioned proscenium arch and provides for them a dilapidated apartment filled with sight gags (including an unintentional one-a supposedly hard to open door that rattles the walls when merely touched). 

 

While the humidity and avian effectively fade with the sunset over the Porthouse Theatre, it is clear that not enough sunset has been cast on The Sunshine Boys.  

 

The Sunshine Boys continues through July 23 at Porthouse Theatre, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Cuyahoga Falls.  For tickets, $13 to $36, call 330-929-4416 or visit http://dept.kent.edu/theatre/porthouse/TicketInfo.htm.
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