Dick Bond is Willy, the angrier of the two old men. His performance is solid and believable, though he doesn't seem able to remove the character from the territory charted by Walter Matthau in the 1975 screen production. As his ex-partner Al, Ed Kramer offers an air of geniality and ease, a needed contrast to Willy's vinegar. His lisp is a fantastic device, creating a sweet, seemingly unintentional comedy in almost everything he says.

Tony Zandol's set design is wonderful. The bald armchair, torn curtains and splattered floor, achieve a cozy and quaint yet dingy feeling. Scene, place, time and resident are all clear before anyone even takes the stage. Details are cared for; note the lint and hair on reluctant Willy's suit jacket.

"The Sunshine Boys," written in 1971, is about how comedy does not always age well. The two old men, once two of Vaudeville's greatest, have been displaced by the approach of the 21st century. The question haunts them -- "Are we still funny?"
Unfortunately some of Pentacle's audience was asking the same thing about Simon's script.
The humor of "The Sunshine Boys" is written in Seinfeldian patter 20 years before Seinfeld. Laughs revolve almost entirely around constant disagreements and the anticipation of madcap trouble you know is coming. This predictability is not the play's fault. It was sharp in 1971, when it fathered a style of comedy that decades later would leave its originators dull by comparison.  
Most of the laughing heads in the theatre were gray or white, people who could still remember what it felt like to hear these sorts of jokes for the first time. Next to me sat two couples in their twenties, who, like me, laughed a little less often and yawned a little more.

For all of this, Pentacle's production of "The Sunshine Boys," still is entertaining and certainly well executed by a talented cast and crew. It plays through February 16. For tickets visit pentacletheatre.org.