A cast of local business professionals with big personalities brings a little bit of sunshine and a lot of humor to the Earl Smith Strand theatre this January with Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys.
The two main characters are Van Pearlberg as Willie Clark and Murray Sarkin, a local actor, as Al Lewis. The cast also includes Bert Reeves, assistant district attorney; Kim Gresh, president of SA White Oil Co.; Cassandra Buckalew, owner of The Historic Marietta Trolley; Bill Dunaway, former Marietta mayor; Steve Imler, retired businessman; and Andrew Cole, Strand's event and bar manager; with Earl Reece as director and Cassi Costoulas as assistant director.
The long-running 1972 Broadway play, The Sunshine Boys, focuses on the aging Al Lewis and Willie Clark, a one-time vaudevillian team known as "The Sunshine Boys." In the course of some 40-odd years, the two not only grew to hate each other but never even spoke to each other off-stage throughout the final year of their act. The stubborn Clark, who was not ready for retirement resented the wiser Lewis for breaking up the act when he opted to leave show business.
When CBS invites the team to reunite for a special on the history of comedy, Clark is convinced by his nephew Ben to revive one of the old routines one last time. Much of the humor is derived from efforts to get the two cantankerous actors into the same room for a rehearsal, their differences of opinion once they reunite, and their shenanigans on the actual broadcast.
Contains profanity and adult situations.
