What Old Men Want: A Review of “The Sunshine Boys”

John Mazzarella, left, and Fred Whitridge portray "The Sunshine Boys" at the Grange this weekend.

Contributed by Jennifer Brennock

Orcas Island may be the only place where a community theater experience can include a tiered audience seat with two dogs behind you sighing and breathing on your neck. These service animals in training were the only audience members unimpressed by last weekend’s ATOI performance of “The Sunshine Boys” at the Grange. The rest of us were ready to laugh at Neil Simon’s play from the first line.

Simon’s play is a production with a difficult task: to make comedy out of the sadness of aging and its degrading losses for the individual, like forgetting the name of a relative or how to open your own front door. Simon’s main character, Willie Clark, makes a punchline out of locking himself in the bathroom overnight, for example. It is funny.

Lead actors Fred Whitridge and John Mazzarella play Al Lewis and Willie Clark, respectively, former performance partners in the out-of-style entertainment genres of vaudeville. The opening act takes place with Clark in his decaying apartment with a fridge that won’t last the week in a building that should be torn down. An upside-down wire hanger on the television is yet another sign of his withering life.

Pushed into it, Clark takes the only opportunity he has left and tries to overcome a 12-year grudge with his best friend, Lewis, for the benefit of what he wants more than to maintain his grudge: to perform again. Lewis and Clark decide to perform their outdated act so they’ll be validated again. They desire to relive their glory days of decades past. One more time they will be relevant and virile again.

Sitting under double canine exhales, I was enjoying the performance and touched to see through Clark’s eyes that he just really wants to perform as he used to, to be wanted, acclaimed and greeted with applause. He wants to regain what he’s lost, and I saw it as a touching universal desire for all human beings. I scanned the audience; it was all ages. I wondered what they thought an old man wants most.

Clark’s fears are so well-written by Simon, directed by Doug Bechtel, and played by Mazzarella that the tension is palpable in the pause of dialogue when the two men make eye contact for the first time since falling out of friendship. It’s poignant to see these two vulnerable humans reunited during their most exposed stage of life.

Fred Whitridge is adorable from the start as Lewis with easy delivery and genuine dimples. His dapper dress and neatly slicked hair is reminiscent of a little boy on the first day of school, and he contrasts with Mazzarella, who plays the explosive and sarcastic Clark in a single pair of pajamas the majority of his compelling performance.

As the play progressed, easily serving up sharp humor, I changed my mind. It’s lifelong friendship that the mature gentleman desires most. When the characters attempt to rehearse the vaudeville bit they each know so well it requires no rehearsal, they can’t get past the first line without disagreement. They descend into spiraling, explosive discourse. They need each other for it. They need to insult each other with projections about their own lack, decay, and vulnerabilities.  Clark refuses to grow old gracefully and I’m rooting for him even as he rejects everything that’s good for him.

Lewis and Clark are two men who respect each other but can’t express it in any other way than to meet the other’s fire and anger with their own of equal strength. Though Mazzarella delivers a line that says, “I don’t want to argue with you,” in our seats we know he wants that more than anything else. When he’s fighting with his friend like a long married couple over an annoying habit, even pushing it to potential violence by picking up a paring knife against Lewis, I know the fire of good chemistry is what these guys want.

The role of the producer within the plot tells the audience, “Lewis without Clark is like laughter without joy.” “The Sunshine Boys” had many funny lines that sometimes had Mazzarella and Whitridge laughing more often than Lewis and Clark. It’s community theater. Only in community theater can a couple actors cracking each other up on stage add to the flavor of the experience rather than detract from it.

From the first misogynistic joke about who should be cast in the Lewis and Clark act as the nurse, Simon’s writing exposes itself as not relevant today. That theme is a sign of the times when the play was written, in the 70s, and for the critical thinker it doesn’t spoil the story which is, after all, about becoming irrelevant.

Nick Hershenow, Gwyneth Burrill, Pat Ayers and Greg Ayers round out the cast.

When asked what he thought old men wanted director and actor Doug Bechtel answered quickly. “They want what everybody wants,” he said. “They want a life that means something.”

“The Sunshine Boys” ultimately ends with what old men don’t want. They don’t want to weaken in front of their loved ones. They don’t want to be a burden. They don’t want to seem incapable, even in the eyes of their closest, longest friend. In the end, Willie Clark gives in to being taken care of. He’s no longer going out kicking and screaming, and even though his care will be best this way, I was a little sad he let go of the fight.

So were the dogs.

Actors Theater of Orcas Island continues to present “The Sunshine Boys” at the Grange this weekend, June 25, 26, and 27 with a cast of nine community theater actors. Tickets are $10.

Jennifer Brennock recently earned a MFA in Creative Writing.  She lives and writes in Olga.