LOS ANGELES - Ron Clark is one of the most prolific, successful, and hilarious writers you’ve never heard of.  He’s written for nearly every comedian from Jackie Gleason to Jackie Mason to the Smothers Brothers to Mel Brooks.  He also writes plays and film scripts.  One of those, a three-person play, A Bench in the Sun, was given a workshop reading the other day as part of  the Jewish Community Centers’ Celebrity Staged Play Readings.

 

A Bench in the Sun, as read by Ed Asner, Joe Ruskin, and Alice Hirson, is an absolutely perfect play: funny, poignant, and wise.  It deals with two old men who spend their days philosophizing and bickering on a bench in the garden of their retirement home.  They have been friends all their lives—except for a gap of 42 years. 

Asner, who plays Burt, is a crotchety cynic who remains in his pajamas all day so he won’t have to keep undressing when he takes his frequent naps.  A former accountant, he has spent his life with one woman and one job. 

Ruskin, who plays Harold, is a dapper dandy in a suit and bow tie.  He is an eternal optimist despite his three failed marriages, five failed businesses, and children who won’t speak to him.  His life has been “an endless array of adventures,” he says.  Harold and Burt are perfectly mismatched, and Lemmon and Matthau couldn’t play them better.

 

Into this cozy idyll comes the glamorous Adrienne, a former movie star, played by Alice Hirson.  Harold falls instantly in love with her: “Movie stars don’t age, they just grow more mysterious,” he says.  “I’ll bet those aren’t her teeth,” Burt responds.

 

Adrienne, who flits between the two men, switches her attentions from Harold to Burt, and the two men temporarily switch personalities: Burt takes to wearing sports clothes (trousers and a jacket that “almost match”) and even smiles occasionally, while Harold turns dour and cranky.

 

 In the end, everything sorts itself out.  The two men continue to enjoy their bench in the sun as they complain about the food the retirement home provides.  Harold has two rules, he says:  “No tapioca pudding and no doctors.”  And Burt notes that “Retirement homes do everything to keep you alive and nothing to keep you living.”  But it’s clear that their bickering keeps these two men alive and their brain cells churning.  Their conversation is invariably hilarious, consistently pithy, and a paean to friendship that lasts a lifetime.

 

A Bench in the Sun was presented at Los Angeles Valley College.  It was produced and directed by Alexandra More.

 

More’s Celebrity Staged Play Readings will continue in September with Brooklyn Boy by Donald Margulies, Benya the King by Richard Schotter in October, Modern Orthodox by Daniel Goldfarb in November, and the Los Angeles premiere of Half and Half by James Sherman in December.  Each performance is given twice: at the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center on Saturday evenings at 7:30, and the Westside Jewish Community Center on Sundays at 2.