In this striking production of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys, the titular vaudevillian duo have firmly entered Shakespeare’s “sixth age” of human decline, marching to the beat of a very different and distinctly dated theatrical drum.
I have long held that playwright Neil Simon deliberately named his two main protagonists in The Sunshine Boys after America’s original Lewis and Clark—Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the two American explorers and soldiers chosen by President Thomas Jefferson to lead the historic Corps of Discovery Expedition from 1804 to 1806.
While the historical Lewis and Clark explored the physical American frontier, Simon’s characters explore a different kind of unknown wilderness: old age, retirement, and an evolving entertainment landscape.
By the 1970s, the era of vaudeville Simon’s characters thrived in was long dead, leaving the two men isolated in a modern world they no longer recognise or understand. So just as the historical figures blazed a trail to the Pacific, Simon’s Lewis and Clark were pioneers of early American comedy.
Vaudeville laid the groundwork for modern sketch comedy, sitcoms, and stand-up. By naming them after iconic explorers, Simon elevates his characters from simple, bickering old men to foundational “founding fathers” of American show business.
The original explorers are permanently linked in history; you rarely mention one without the other. Similarly, Willie Clark and Al Lewis spent over forty years as a duo, achieving total creative synergy despite deeply hating each other behind the scenes. Simon underscores the irony that, like the historical figures, the two comedians are fundamentally defined by their partnership and cannot exist in the public consciousness alone.
This production succeeds because it refuses to pretend the world hasn’t changed since 1972.
By framing Neil Simon’s rapid-fire punchlines through the lenses of Beckett, Pinter, and a hauntingly empty auditorium projected as a backdrop to the action on stage, the creative team has transformed a dusty commercial comedy into a vital, thought-provoking study of time, memory, and the entertainments we leave behind.
This interpretation, with the projected image up the back, and the overall set design are from Director and Set Designer Peter Goers, who liberally applies his deep knowledge of theatre and appreciation of the function of nostalgia in a changing world to magically present two clear ways of seeing his production.
There is the lens of Neil Simon’s original intention—to simply make ’em laugh—and the more theatrically attuned entendre of seeing the play squarely in its historical context through Goers’ reasonably subtle use of stage design and multimedia.
What unfolds under Goers’ guidance is no longer just a nostalgic mid-century farce, but an expressionistic period piece exploring the structural toxicity of early show business and the quiet tragedy of elder irrelevance.
Simon paints The Sunshine Boys with a warm brush of mid-century sentimentality, yet this affectionate tribute deliberately masks the darker, systemic reality of the vaudeville stage.
Historical vaudeville was an industry built on gruelling exploitation, material piracy, and the reduction of performers to cheap, mocking stereotypes. For large stretches of the play, a great deal of the production rests on an entirely predictable and repetitive dialogue between Willie and his long-suffering nephew, Ben Silverman.
However, Tom Tassone’s naturalistic performance as Ben completely elevates these scenes; he skilfully avoids becoming a mere straight man, anchoring the dynamic as he navigates his Uncle Willie’s relentless barrage of cantankerous avoidance tactics.
Under Goers’ direction, these predictable sequences take on a rhythmic weariness that might just as well appear in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Like Vladimir and Estragon trapped in an endless cycle of routine to keep existential dread at bay, Willie and Ben bicker not because they have anything new to say, but because the repetition proves Uncle Willie is alive (and dreadfully bored).
Willie’s tension between memory and reality culminates in a breathtaking mid-act tableau. As Willie expounds the glory days of his youth to Ben, Martin Smith’s lighting dramatically shifts in tone, casting away the dingy reality of Willie’s hotel room, and the upstage projection of an empty auditorium is magically populated with a silent, predominantly male audience from the past.
The sudden appearance of these spectral onlookers introduces a heavy sense of menace and emotional claustrophobia, and the production takes an all-too-fleeting lurch into Harold Pinter’s school of theatrics.
For an audience determined to bask unthinkingly in the nostalgia of mid-twentieth-century toxicity, this brief stylistic detour is unlikely to leave much of an impression. However, for a younger audience—those who are culturally closer to Ben Silverman’s three-year-old children than to the vaudevillians on stage—this moment proves to be a welcome, necessary plateau.
It provides a modern psychological lens from which they can safely observe the rest of the play’s dated mechanics unfold.
Adding another rich layer of irony to this production is the off-stage reality of its main casting, which you discover as you read the programme. On stage, South Australian community theatre staples Robert Cusenza and Robin “Smacka” Schmelzkopf perfectly fit the late-sixties to early-seventies age bracket of Simon’s fading vaudevillians, capturing every ounce of their characters’ calcified exhaustion. Yet, while Willie and Al are locked in a vicious cycle of lifelong animosity, Cusenza and Schmelzkopf reportedly get along famously well.
It becomes beautifully evident that it takes two actors who trust and respect each other deeply to safely simulate a hatred this sharp, transforming what could have been a bitter screaming match into a tightly choreographed dance of comedic timing.
Schmelzkopf delivers a rounded, believable and entirely unique Al Lewis, offering a brilliant counterweight to Robert Cusenza’s turn as Willie Clark.
Cusenza brings a relatable touch of vaudevillian duality to the role—keeping one eye blatantly peeking through the fourth wall to count his adoring fans, while remaining firmly and devastatingly grounded in his place on the stage.
The collision of values in different eras is sharply demonstrated in the play’s two nurses. In her theatrical debut, Lauren Thiel bravely embodies the hyper-sexualised variety-show caricature of the 1970s, playing the “buxom nurse”, whose skimpy costume and broad objectification allow Willie to masquerade as a leering gynaecologist for cheap, dated laughs.
However, this retro spectacle is well countered in the later scenes by the “realistic nurse” stationed beside Willie’s hospital bed, played by Penni Hamilton-Smith, who delivers a no-nonsense, pragmatic, though theatrically aware performance. Sitting calmly munching on chocolates, her grounded presence acts as a modern reality check, refusing to play along with the outdated scripts of yesterday.
Rounding off the production’s success, Laura Doheny’s evocative work as Costumier adds immensely to the cohesion of the world, providing the essential visual textures that make this meta-theatrical shift possible. Their contributions perfectly service the highly intelligent sleight of hand Goers delivers with The Sunshine Boys. In an unusual but effective confluence of styles this is a rare theatrical piece you can both love and hate at the same time.
Five stars (for theatrical instinct and insight).
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