A Marriage of 2 Funny Minds Reappears on Stage

If you missed “Bermuda Avenue Triangle” at either the Tiffany Theater or the Canon Theatre in 1995 or ‘96, don’t worry. Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna provide an excerpt as part of their newest showcase, an easygoing greatest-hits affair called “If You Ever Leave Me . . . I’m Going With You!”

Like “Bermuda,” which was a play as opposed to a career survey, “If You Ever Leave Me . . . “ should keep the duo’s many fans happy for a couple of hours.

The show may in fact go down easier than the formulaic “Bermuda” did for some. This one’s formulaic in a balder way. It is what it is, and is subtitled “An Evening Celebrating Thirty-Three Years of Love, Marriage and Comedy.” Listing no director, the show comprises various personal reminiscences, video excerpts of the couple’s 1965 on-air wedding hosted by Merv Griffin and vignettes from various Taylor-Bologna plays and films.

Entering the theater, the first thing you spot are two tall, black chairs on stage. There’s comedy in them thar stools. You think of Mike Nichols and Elaine May, 1960s one-acts or collections thereof, such as “Lovers and Other Strangers,” the 1968 Taylor-Bologna quartet made into a film two years later. (The screenplay received an Academy Award nomination that year.) You think of urban psycho-babblers from the Murray Schisgal “Luv” school, and early Neil Simon.

Funny what a couple of chairs can do.

Taylor and Bologna know from funny, and they’re sharp performers in handily contrasting ways. Taylor, Fran Drescher’s mom on “The Nanny,” is all legato delivery and canny deadpan pauses, a kvetcher and a deliberator. Bologna, who plays Adam Sandler’s dad in the upcoming film “Big Daddy,” favors the staccato attack, but with a shrug.

The sketches of “If You Ever Leave Me” tend toward the battle-of-the-sexes variety, as is pointed out helpfully by Bologna during the show. We also get pasta jokes, a Viagra gag, references to the in-laws’ cooking, and the like.

The audience, at least Saturday’s and I’m guessing plenty of others, ate it up. Taylor and Bologna know the territory, especially as performers, and secondarily as providers of their own material. Some of it you’d call retro, or worse. Some, the best of it, you wouldn’t.

Late in the evening Taylor and Bologna play Frank and Bea, the parents talking to their son about his divorce, in the “Lovers and Other Strangers” finale. Here, the writing transcends gag-writing, even good gag-writing. The more the parents try to nail their son for what he’s doing, the more they end up revealing about their own lives. My favorite line in it, “I hate veiny veal,” isn’t really funny at all. Unless it’s delivered by someone as aware of its potential as Bologna.

The scene remains a gem. Largely by not writing straight to the joke but rather, by writing underneath, around and above it, Taylor and Bologna came up with something 30-plus years ago that holds up far, far, far better than anything in “Bermuda Avenue Triangle.”

A pleasure to see it again, especially as finessed by the people who wrote it.

* “If You Ever Leave Me . . . I’m Going With You!” Canon Theatre, 205 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills. Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 and 7 p.m.; Mondays at 8 p.m. Ends April 26. $40-$45. (310) 859-2830. Running time: 2 hours.

Renee Taylor, Joseph Bologna.

Written by Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna. Set by Thomas Buderwitz. Lighting by Ken Booth. Sound by Jon Gottlieb. Choreography by Danny Daniels. Stage manager Maria Lyn McGinnis.