Joe Moore and Pat Sajak’s second night in "Wrestling Ernest Hemingway" Friday at Hawaii Theatre drew a sparse audience, barely filling the first few rows of orchestra.

But it was the right audience: mostly gray-haired, many singing along or humming to the between-scenes tracks picked by Moore. They were people like the two bachelor retirees played by the anchorman (Moore) and the game show host (Sajak), old enough to experience the sting of aging and young-hearted enough to laugh at it.

I didn’t find the predictable prostate and sex-equipment jokes quite as funny. But I, a half-generation behind, nearly strangled with laughter during the scene in which Sajak’s "Walter" gets high on marijuana for the first time — courtesy of medical marijuana prescribed to his friend, Moore’s "Frank," and dispensed in a harmless-looking vaporizer.

"How work does it take to long?" inquires the normally precise and well-spoken Walter in the period — always hilarious to knowing onlookers — when he doesn’t know he’s been affected yet.

The scene characterizes what’s right and wrong with "Wrestling Ernest Hemingway," adapted and partly rewritten, with permission, by the Moore/Sajak team from a screenplay by Steve Conrad. (P.S. It has little to do with Ernest Hemingway.)

What’s right is the cotton-candy light and sweet humor of the situations; what’s wrong is that the jokes mask weighty issues — aging, approaching illness and death, loneliness, regret, disappointment. And, as with cotton candy, the substance is largely absent, the issues only glimpsed in a pair of emotional wrap-up scenes that are the least believably acted.

Moore and Sajak, who met on the real-life "Good Morning, Vietnam" American Forces Network, hosting radio programs and delivering the censored news, reprise their roles in "The Odd Couple."

Moore is the tippling, cursing, storytelling Merchant Marine captain Frank, whose son has exiled him to a small town in Florida. Sajak’s Walter was a self-employed barber, a prim and proper sort who exiled himself to crossword puzzles, Little League baseball games and a hopeless and un- spoken infatuation with a young waitress.

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the usually dark-suited, dignified KHON anchorman Moore wearing a T-shirt stretched by his paunch, barefoot with his legs visibly crimped by the high-riding socks he’s shed and wearing cosmetic bald patches amid his trademark full head of pompadoured hair. There’s a scene in which Walter is trimming Frank’s hair and I’ll bet there was a line in a contract that would trigger a lawsuit if Sajak’s scissors slipped.

Funny, yes, but the play never gets much beyond Frank’s rueful comment, dredging up The Who’s "My Generation": "Hope I die before I get really old." To be fair, most of us never do go too far in talking out loud about end-of-life issues. That’s why we go to plays and exhibits, and read books: We want to see the idea modeled.

Moore is most effective in the funniest moments, less so in the times when he must reach out to others. Sajak is evenly prissy and controlled. Both could learn from Tony-nominated Loretta Ables Sayre, who plays a feisty, knife-wielding waitress and rings true equally in moments both comedic and tender.

Since the play was written for the screen, there’s an inordinate amount of set-changing time, made pleasant by Moffatt’s right-on music choices from Big Band to the Beatles.

I’ll say this, though: At 63, I left thinking — not about the negligibly written play overstuffed with lame jokes, but about the issues that are planted in it like divots in a smooth, green golf course.

As Walter says, attempting to cheer Frank: "You’re still on the green side . . . not under it." Good when a play leaves you thinking.

Wanda A. Adams is a Honolulu freelance writer.

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CORRECTION: The 1993 film “Wrestling Ernest Hemingway” opened in movie theaters. An earlier version of this review said it was a direct-to-DVD movie. Also, music played between scenes of the stage production was selected by Joe Moore. The review said Tom Moffatt made the selections, although he did provide the music.