Welcome to The Actors Temple Theatre

“Don’t Leave It All To Your Children! reminds you of a combined episode of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in and The Carol Burnett Show.

It is for a senior audience looking for humor that resonates with them, their stage in life and their view of life now, including how much it seems to have changed.

One of my favorite lyrics, concerns the trials of watching TV and wondering “if there are any shows on where the actors keep their clothes on.”

The house at the Actor’s Temple was full, and the target audience was clearly relating and enjoying themselves.

Don’t Leave It All To Your Children! started life in the still-fertile mind of Saul Ilson, a five-time EMMY-nominated writer of such shows as The Smothers Brothers. He wrote book, music and lyrics and directed. The show ran four years in Palms Springs, California.  Ilson realized the growing senior demographic would respond to a gently-biting musical review to which it could relate, and he appears to be right.

Being right was helped immensely by the presence of comedian Steve Rossi in the show. Rossi was half of the Allen & Rossi comedy team with Marty (“Hello, Dere!”) Allen.

Rossi has a wonderful voice, a great stage presence and enjoys himself on stage so much you can’t help but enjoy watching him.   He’s joined by Barbara Minkus, who has a slew of Broadway, off-Broadway and TV credits; Marcia Rodd, a Tony-nominee for Shelter, who can still belt it; and Ronnie Schell, who most will remember from Gomer Pyle, USMC, but who also enjoyed a distinguished standup career.

DON’T LEAVE IT ALL TO YOUR CHILDREN hits the bulls-eye with its target market, for whom it is at times funny, ribald and touching.”

By Paul Cozby, About.com

“// The first funny thing about “Don’t Leave It All To Your Children,” the musical revue about baby boomers becoming senior citizens, is the discount given to theater-goers under 55. Then, it’s at the Actor’s Temple Theater, which is an actual synagogue in New York’s theater district, once the spiritual home of Al Jolson and Jack Benny and Sophie Tucker.

In the course of 90 minutes, four veteran performers sing some 20 songs and crack twice as many jokes about growing up in the 1960’s and growing old in the twenty-first century . It is written by Saul Ilson, who spent decades as a writer and producer for such television variety shows as the Smothers

In its own light, good-natured way, the show taps into the widely-held shock by the “Don’t trust anyone over 30”/ Flower Power generation that both they and their pop icons – the show mentions by name Sally Field and Steven Spielberg and Jane Fonda and Raquel Welch and even Beaver Cleaver (Jerry Mather of “Leave It To Beaver”) – have become senior citizens.

The key to the charm of “Don’t Leave It All To Your Children” is the cast. One song makes fun of Ed Sullivan, who is probably now best known as the variety show host who wouldn’t show Elvis below the waist and introduced the Beatles to America. Who better to perform this number than cast member Steve Rossi, who was one-half the comedy team of Allen and Rossi, appearing 44 times on The Ed Sullivan Show. The other stars are familiar faces, Ronnie Schell (who was Duke on “Gomer Pyle” and Marlo Thomas’s agent on “That Girl”), Barbara Minkus (a regular on “Love American Style”) and Marcia Rodd (Johnny Depp’s mother on “21 Jump Street.”) With that kind of pop culture provenance, “Don’t Leave It All To Your Children” should have a retro as well as a geriatric appeal.”

—Jonathan Mandell, CultureMob.com

You don’t have to be old to enjoy DON’T LEAVE IT ALL TO YOUR CHILDREN! This revue celebrates aging, the aged and even death with soft-focus satire and humor.  The vaudevillian sketches, in fact, are perfectly suited to the material.

With his deadpan expressions, outsized presence and sly humor, Steve Rossi was my personal cast favorite.

The audience seemed to be enjoying itself immensely. This one fits the bill like a well-worn tuxedo.

–Steve Weinstein, Edge Entertainment

This charming off-Broadway revue, welcoming Baby Boomers into the ranks of Senior Citizenry, walks the delicate tightrope between nostalgia and joie de vivre. Saul Ilson, the mastermind behind the musical comedy revue Don’t Leave it All to Your Children, has over 40 years writing for the likes of Billy Crystal, Bill Cosby and the Smothers Brothers Hour. The show’s 90 minutes of skits and songs are fast-paced and reminiscent of both The Smothers Brothers and Rowan and Martin’s “Laugh-In.”

The four showbiz veterans who star in the show are poster children for an energetic, optimistic old age.

The show promises to give baby boomers “a taste of what they have to look forward to.” For those of us who are not in the same “vibe” or age group, we can still enjoy the energy, talent, laughs, and good will of the spirited performances and writing in Don’t Leave It All To Your Children.

–Wendy Sanderson, Best of Off-Broadway.com