Theatre in Review: Two Jews, Talking (Theatre at St. Clement's)To decide whether you might enjoy this grab-bag of old-school hokum, take this simple test: Do you fondly recall the era of sitcoms like That Girl, Barney Miller, and The Love Boat? Five points. Are you nostalgic for the heyday of Alan King, Myron Cohen, and Jan Murray? That's four points. (If you don't recognize these names, deduct four points.) Did you think Mr. Saturday Night was a scream? Add another three points. If you rack up a score between five and 12, a visit to Theatre at St. Clement's is indicated. Those with rather smaller numbers should make other plans. At 91 and 88, respectively, Hal Linden and Bernie Kopell are hale and hearty, digging into this archeological trove of one-liners with undimmed enthusiasm. Playwright Ed. Weinberger has conceived his play as a diptych: The men are first seen in the Sinai Desert, circa 1505 BCE, fed up with forty years of wandering, and, later, sharing a bench on Long Island in 2022. (The characters have different names in each setting, but their personalities remain the same.) If ever a play's title told all, this is it: This is the ultimate conversation piece, its thoughts expressed almost entirely through kvetching. Linden, sporting a mane of gray hair and uttering pronouncements with the zeal of Moses laying down the law, makes the most of a rambling tale of the afterlife that ends on a priceless note. He complains expertly about God's scheduling of the Sabbath ("right in the middle of the weekend"). He also notes that his otherwise disappointing son is very good with his hands, adding, "It was like having a live-in Gentile." And, for the anthropologically minded, there's his classification system that divides everything into the categories of Gentile (Lexington Avenue, Triscuits) and Jewish (86th Street, Saltines). Kopell, his face reshaped by time into the general contours and topography of a prune, faces the world with a slightly stunned demeanor. Everything he sees and hears is, to him, beyond belief. "You were there -- at the orgy?" he marvels as Linden describes the Hebrews running amok while Moses is off collecting the Ten Commandments. In the modern era, life is no less troublesome: "I had a dental plan that didn't cover teeth," Kopell laments. Even when playing straight man, he has a fine time with a running gag in which he expertly -- in all innocence -- steps on Linden's best punch lines. Are most of the jokes as old as the pyramids? Indeed. Does this matter? Less than you might think. This is one show that knows its target audience: "Now, here's my idea," Linden announces. "When we're healthy, that's when we pay our doctors. When we get sick, the doctors work for free. Now that's a system." At the performance I attended, this assertion got a robust round of applause, not surprising; one imagines most of this crowd aghast at the size of their Medicare payments. This is by way of saying that Two Jews, Talking is best enjoyed by longtime fans of Linden and Kopell, who won't mind that Weinberger's script suffers from what we used to call iron-poor blood. Weinberger, a comedy-writing powerhouse in the days of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, and Phyllis, is here content to recycle standard gags about prostate problems, ungrateful children, and wives who outlive their spouses. One keeps hearing echoes of other, better entertainments: During the first scene, it's hard not to draw invidious comparisons with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner's 2,000-year-old-man routine; later, one is reminded of Linden, in his fifties, playing a senior citizen in I'm Not Rappaport. Indeed, most of this material is as old as Grossinger's. For example, Linden offers his vision of a world turned anti-Semitic: "Spending limits on catered Bar Mitzvahs. Everybody has to buy retail. Pretty soon -- Mohels will have to perform back-alley circumcisions. Then, one by one, they'll start closing Chinese restaurants." No, not that! Dan Wackerman directs this exercise in alte kaker tsuris with a light touch, aided by Harry Feiner's simple production design, dominated by large-scale projections and lighting that evokes arid Egypt and leafy Long Island. Weinberger makes a halfhearted bid for tears near the end, giving each character a personal sorrow, but you're unlikely to fall for it. Familiarity is the thing here: Two Jews, Talking is a comedy for those who already know the payoff. "Comedy never gets old," says the show's tag line. Maybe not, but it can get awfully tired. --David Barbour 
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