Carol & Mike; Flo & Bo

Florence Henderson and Robert Reed know that for some people, they’ll always be Carol and Mike Brady--those too-good-to-be-true parents on “The Brady Bunch.” And sure enough, the ads for their new play, Lawrence Roman’s “Alone Together” (at the La Mirada Civic) trumpet them as “The Stars of the Brady Bunch.”

“My goodness, if I let something like that hurt my feelings, I’d get out of the business,” Henderson says with a laugh. “Denying ‘The Brady Bunch’ would be like denying a part of my own family. On the other hand, some people fail to accept that we’re actors and actresses playing Mike and Carol Brady. But this character I’m playing now is the total opposite of Carol. Carol was patient, sweet, solved everything. This woman is screaming all the time. She doesn’t have a very high tolerance level.”

In the play, Henderson and Reed play parents of three grown sons who leave home--then, one by one, come back to roost. Reed discovered the piece first, playing it opposite Janis Paige last year at Florida’s Coconut Grove. Then in August, when he and Henderson were at work on the “A Very Brady Christmas” special, she innocently mentioned that she’d be doing the play at La Mirada . . . and voila .

Reed has his own theories about the public’s continued interest in the Brady family. “In television, there’s always some curiosity about seeing what the people from old shows look like,” he reasons. “And perhaps our show presented some values that we’ve begun to get a bit nostalgic for.” Which doesn’t imply that he’s the world’s biggest fan of the sitcom genre.

“Look, I’m an actor,” Reed says bluntly. “I’ve been doing this almost 40 years, I’m now in my 82nd play. You don’t always get to do what you want. Sometimes you don’t even know what you want to do. No, playing light comedy for the rest of my life would not be my choice. But God knows, I like it every now and then. And with the (“Brady” cast), we all like each other; getting together is a hoot. It’s like a family reunion without all the underlying problems.”