TWO ACTORS’ ROLES FOR THE AGES

“Midge and Nat are both 81 years old,” Cleavon Little says, referring to the characters he and co-star Judd Hirsch play in Herb Gardner’s “I’m Not Rappaport.” “It’s interesting because both Judd’s father and my father are the same age. They’re both 82.”

“They weren’t when we started,” Hirsch interjects. “They can get older but we can’t. The play keeps us at 81. When we’re 100 we’ll still have to play 81.”

“We’ll have to play younger,” notes Little.

“And that’s harder,” responds Hirsch, picking up the theme. “We’ll have to go back in rehearsal for that.” Suddenly Hirsch assumes the role of an ancient, wheezing, confused actor, complaining to an unseen director, “Faster, faster. All these years you tell me to move slower and now you want faster.”

Seated in Hirsch’s dressing room backstage at San Francisco’s Curran Theater, where “Rappaport” closed Sunday, Hirsch and Little play off each other like a seasoned comedy team.

They’ve been playing partners for two years now, since June 6, 1985 when “I’m Not Rappaport” opened on Broadway. On Tuesday they open at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles.

The affectionate, teasing, crusty bond they create nightly between their irascible characters seems to have rubbed off on their offstage life as well. The play takes place in New York’s Central Park where the old-timers meet daily to reminisce and explore their new friendship. Little’s Midge is an elderly black janitor who has found that the task of least resistance is the best way for him to get along in the world. Hirsch’s Nat is a retired waiter and longtime socialist who believes in direct action.

He is also possessed of a wild imagination, with which he continually reinvents his own life story. Nat doesn’t tell lies, he explains to Midge; he “makes alterations.” Most of the action of the play revolves around the “alterations” Nat makes in his teasing friendship with Midge. He is more earnest in his attempts to keep his daughter from restricting his freedom and to deal with the unsavory characters--muggers and dope dealers--who inhabit his corner of the park.

Little has been with the show since early 1985, when it received its world premiere at the Seattle Repertory Theater, directed by Rep artistic director Daniel Sullivan, who also staged the New York production. So, too, has Cheryl Giannini, who plays Nat’s daughter. Hirsch joined the cast on Broadway, but his association with the play--like Little’s--goes back to its first reading in 1982.

“I couldn’t imagine doing the play at first,” he recalls, “just two guys who can’t see each other well sitting around talking. ‘It’s going to be death,’ I thought. ‘It’ll look just (as) it does here in the reading.’

“But what we’ve done is gotten progressively older, progressively more feeble, which means progressively more daring. That’s what makes the script so much fun to do. It’s hard work. These two guys aren’t going to sit around and allow themselves to be old, and you have to do things their way.

“If you dare to get up there and start to dance, (as) they do, you’d better be sure you can convince people that you’re old and dancing. This old guy is thinking to himself, ‘Look at me move!’ And what you’re thinking is, ‘That guy really thinks he can move.’ ”

“At our age,” adds Little, who turned 48 two weeks ago, “we may attempt to do certain things we did when we were 20, 25. There’s some holding back, because we know we can’t stretch as far any more, but we’ll still attempt it. Well these guys are the same way. I get up, when I get angry at Nat, and I’m going to try to knock him down. I can’t even see the man! But (these guys) still believe they can do all the stuff they ever did.”

“You know,” remarks Hirsch, “We’ve been getting progressively more blind in the show since we started. Two guys who can see quite well and it’s like we’re really losing our eyesight. You look up at a person, you know she’s there, and she turns into a blur right before your eyes.”

“That reality on stage becomes reality to us,” says Little.

“When you’re playing character roles,” Hirsch adds, “a part of you becomes your audience. You’re real conscious of anything you do that feels like a lie.”

Both actors continue to develop their characters, adding to them from night to night. “It’s just a subtle nuance in how you say a line or relate to each other,” Little says. But it helps to keep them fresh in the roles and enjoying the work. Each speaks admiringly of new elements in the other’s performance: Little of a new trick Hirsch recently developed in the way he moves his mouth; Hirsch of the night he couldn’t tell for a moment whether Little had really developed arthritis overnight.

“It’s almost like we’re doing two plays,” Hirsch says, “to bring to the present all of the things that represent the characters as they were then. As Nat, I’m still living in 1909 in a place where my father held me up at a meeting, and in 1926 when all the people went out on strike. I can quote you everything that happened on the picket line like it was yesterday afternoon, but I’m not so sure about what happened yesterday.”

As they talk, Hirsch and Little slip in and out of character. For a moment at a time, they’re Midge and Nat demonstrating a look, a turn, a way of getting up with a stiff hip or how to steady a piece of paper with shaking hands. Then, just as suddenly, they’re Little and Hirsch again. It takes a half-hour for the makeup artists to prepare them for each show, but no time at all any more for the actors to assume their roles.

“The age stuff has become second nature,” explains Little. “Once the makeup is on we don’t sit in our corners trying to get old. Right to the last second, right till the curtain comes up, we may be sitting out there arguing, acting like fools about other things. You know: ‘Cleavon, you really should give up acting.’ ‘Why you old fool, I made you what you are today.’ The curtain goes up and we’re right into it. It’s a crazy way of preparing ourselves, but what we’re really saying is: Let’s have some fun out there tonight.”