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| Lee Cooley, Donna Kaufman, and Jim Coates photo by Stephanie Cartwright |
highlights from local critics reviews - (click link at bottom of each review to read complete review)
Click here for more information on this production that runs through September 18
"...Ron Clark's play A Bench in the Sun... is a comedy set in a retirement home that focuses on three residents, and also a drama about the daily struggles and the joys in one's twilight years. Don Bluth Front Row Theatre has remounted their 2017 production with a talented trio of actors reprising their roles....While...this play has some good jokes and comic setups, it's also fairly simple and somewhat slight, and there really isn't that much that happens in the plot.... There are some warm, tender moments, including a sweet dance number and a charming ending. However, the revelation of the secrets of the incident in Harold and Burt's past, the outcome of the threat of the home being sold, and a documentary that's being shot have minimal payoff....even though the play is lacking in a few areas, it is still funny and charming and the cast in Don Bluth's production excels in making their characters realistic and the relationships they have with each other natural....Jim Coates and Lee Cooley are simply perfect as Burt and Harold...(they) exhibit perfect comic timing and excellent physical comic abilities that work well to generate big laughs....As Adrienne Bliss, Donna Kaufman is appropriately funny and flirty and full of life...A Bench in the Sun may not be entirely perfect, but it's a charming and funny play that is a love letter to lifelong friendships and also a witty and warm depiction of the curveballs, consequences, joys and reality that life throws at you during your twilight years..." -Gil Benbrook, Talkin' Broadway (click here to read the complete review)
"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....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.")...." - Herbert Paine, Broadway World (click here to read the complete review)
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