Review: Don Bluth Front Row Theatre Presents A BENCH IN THE SUN

Like vintage wines, veteran actors Lee Cooley and Jim Coates just get better with age. In Don Bluth Front Row Theatre's reprise of Ron Clark's bittersweet play, A BENCH IN THE SUN, the dynamic duo delivers a full-bodied and well-balanced display of artful acting. Four years have passed and their chemistry has lost none of its vitality.

Harold (Cooley) and Burt (Coates) are residents of Valley View Gardens, bench buddies and polar opposites, joined at their arthritic hips by the bonds of a long-standing and complicated relationship. They went to school together and worked together (Burt was Harold's accountant), and not until some forty years after a split-up (for reasons to be revealed), now measure out their days in jousts of smart-ass gibes and mutual baiting. Their age is measured in turn by the length of their canes and the strength of their libidos.

Harold has survived three failed marriages and five ruined businesses. His children won't talk to him. Seemingly unfazed by it all, what has not failed him is a stiff upper lip, a mind as sharp as a knife, and an eye for women. He's quite the charming raconteur, regaling Burt, who would otherwise be absorbed in the daily news, with witticisms and reflections on times past.

Burt, in contrast, is a cantankerous yet endearing sort of a guy, quite capable of parrying with Harold and giving back as good as he gets. When left alone, he communes with the spirit of his dearly departed wife Sylvia, acknowledging that there's a score to be settled with Harold ~ a balance sheet that the old accountant must reconcile ~ and promising that he will face up to it.

Their quotidian routines are interrupted by the arrival at the retirement home of Adrienne Bliss (Donna Kaufman), an over the hill femme fatale of filmdom, whose flirtatious ways enthrall Harold and Burt. She'll have her way with them and leave as quickly as she came. It may be that the playwright was aiming for a brief homage to Donald Petrie's Grumpy Old Men, in which Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon vie for the affections of the free-spirited and alluring Ann-Margret. Unfortunately, the romantic interlude in this production feels forced and unconvincing.

Meanwhile, back at the bench, a cloud hovers over Valley View Gardens. It has been sold to developers. As Harold and Burt move on to the next home, we can be sure that the bench will follow.

The bottom line is that Clark's script is rich with one-liners, musings about the seasons and ironies of life ("We did all that for lentil soup!"), tender moments (Harold teaching Burt the waltz), and reflections on changes in the world that make old folks feel irrelevant. Beyond the humor are the reminders of mortality and the abiding reality of congregate living ("Retirement homes do everything to keep you alive and nothing to keep you living.").

Lee Cooley and Jim Coates, revealing their characteristic brilliant sense of comic timing and caricature, own the stage and give director Cheryl Schaar all she...and the audience...could possibly want. Four years later, A BENCH IN THE SUN remains a "delightful gem of a production."

(In the interests of full disclosure, Cooley is a good friend of my mine. Even then, it's not possible to deny great talent.)

A BENCH IN THE SUN runs through September 18th.

Photo credit to Don Bluth Front Row Theatre ~ L to R: Cooley, Kaufman, Coates

Don Bluth Front Row Theatre ~ https://www.donbluthfrontrowtheatre.com/ ~ 8989 E. Vía Linda #118, Scottsdale, AZ ~ 480-314-0841

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