Talk:The Sunshine Boys

message: In the late 1980s, the magazine Dramatics, a publication of the International Thespian Society, used The Sunshine Boys as an example of well-written "high-context dialogue," in which exposition is accomplished subtly by having two characters with a long history together talk about things they know in common and letting the audience gather for itself the meaning of these things and what it tells them about the characters. I'd like to be able to cite this, but can't find the original source. Lawikitejana 19:57, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anyone who can find this reference to add? 

message: If effort is being put into fixing up this article, may I suggest that a serious copy-editor be brought on board? When I see this, the second sentence, I worry:
::"It focuses on aging Al Lewis and Willy Clark, a one-time vaudevillian team known as "Lewis and Clark" who, over the course of forty-odd years, not only grew to hate each other but never spoke to each other off-stage throughout the the final year of their act."
*Aging someone brings to mind active measures to make them look older. Insert "the" before "aging".
*"Forty-odd" is too informal; try "some 40 years", or just "four decades". MoS allows big quantities like this without "about" or "approximately".
*"Vaudevillian" should be linked on first occurrence.
*"Not only ... but" is grammatically "marked"; is such emphasis necessary here? Why not just "year, grew to hate one another and, in the final year of their act, refused to speak with each other off-stage"?
That's ONE sentence. This does no justice to the topic. Tony 22:22, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Substandard writing 

message: …seems to be written based on a different version of the play to that which I saw today (the Savoy Theatre production with deVito and Griffiths as Willie Clark and Al Lewis resepctively). The story isn’t of two men who grew to hate each other, it’s about one of them resenting the other. It seems quite clear that Clark built up the hate internally: unlike Lewis, he didn’t take any joy in performing comedy, he didn’t have the skills which Lewis had naturally, he didn’t know when to get out of the business, and wasn’t able to cope with life after Lewis. Lewis might be a little insensitive to Clark’s feelings, but Clark is far more insensitive to Lewis and his nephew in their efforts towards him. He takes everything as a personal slight: Clark thinks that Lewis strives to spit on him when talking, when Lewis says that it is accidental; Clark thinks that Lewis is conspiring to undermine him by placing furniture in the wrong place during their rehearsals, when he has just placed a chair slightly askew. Add to this the fact that there is no broadcast for them to have shenannigans at, as suggested in the precis, but an aborted studio run-through during which Clark has a heart attack (there is a clear indication of this as you hear the announcer of the actual show play in a recording of the sketch they performed the night that Lewsi left the act), followed by scenes showing the recuperation of Willie, and a reconcilliation with Ben and Al as he finally faces retirement – which makes me wonder if the play has been re-vamped for this London production? Jock123 (talk) 18:07, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The plot section… 

message: The Plot section contains this:  So, was this running gag part of the play as written by Neil Simon or was this added by actor Jack Albertson? – Tea2min (talk) 09:22, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poking