THE sunshine has long set on the partnership of Willie Clark and Al Lewis, for 43 years the Sunshine Boys.

They have not performed for 11 years since Lewis called time on their vaudeville sketch act after losing his touch on the Ed Sullivan Show.

"Hasn't time changed anything?" asks the ever-hopeful Ben Silverman (Dylan Charles), Willie's nephew and agent.

"Yes, I hate him 11 years more," replies the lugubrious Willie (Malcolm Rennie), with a comic timing that has never deserted him, despite a failing ability to remember lines in his twilight years.

As you may well recall from the Walter Matthau-George Burns film version of Neil Simon's 1974 comedy, Silverman needs the old grouches to reunite for one last bow on a CBS variety special.

The ice will take some breaking in a wonderfully witty Simon play that celebrates vaudeville and New York humour - especially Clark's assertion that words with the letter k' are intrinsically funny - while essaying a paean to the frustrations and trials of growing old.

The latter takes initial precedence, as Simon depicts the reduced circumstances of the self-pitying Clark.

Permanently in his pyjamas and switching between unmade bed and his only chair, he lives for his cigars and weekly bitch at the obituaries in Variety, and if he can no longer decide what day it is, he never forgets why he loathes Al Lewis (Lou Hirsch).

"He used to give me the finger," he complains, jabbing at his own chest in the most famous line from Simon's devilishly good dialogue.

The reunion scene is a peach, Rennie and dapper native New Yorker Hirsch sparring as if they had indeed been partners for four decades and more, while making light of Katrina Lindsay's elongated stage design.

Maggie Norris's production rises another notch in the TV studio re-hash of Lewis and Clark's sketch The Doctor Will See You Now, where Simon's love of vaudeville shines through, but all the while you know the grumps will fall out once more.

Melanie Le Barrie's no-nonsense Caribbean nurse adds another comic dimension before tenderness takes over as sunset falls upon the warring old boys. Sunshine outside all day, and even brighter Sunshine at night - what a spring we are having.


The Sunshine Boys, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until May 19. Box office: 0113 213 7700.