Matthew Arkin is careful with his words.

Perhaps it’s because, as an actor – son of Oscar-winner Alan Arkin and brother of Emmy-winner Adam Arkin – he knows the value of words, the impact they can have.

Perhaps it’s because he was once a practicing lawyer and learned that words are subject to interpretation.

But sitting in a bustling diner in Scarsdale hours before he was about to begin work on a new role – in Jeffrey Hatcher’s comedy “Murderers,” at Hudson Stage in Briarcliff – Arkin seems to linger over his answers because he isn’t quite sure what to expect, because all of the work is still before him.

At this point, he has read the script exactly once.

“I really never start work on something until rehearsal,” he says. “I may do some research or reading, if it’s a time period or a topic I’m not familiar with.”

“I’ve always felt – and the people we studied with, Uta Hagen, Austin Pendleton and Sheldon Patinkin, felt – that learning lines before rehearsal means you’re making decisions about what you’re saying and what the other person is saying in the absence of the other person. In this case, my piece is a monologue, but I still want to hear what the director has to say.”

“Murderers” is Jeffrey Hatcher’s wickedly funny look at three people in Florida’s Riddle Key Luxury Retirement Living Center and Golf Course – all of whom have, as the title suggests, taken a life. The play opens Friday and runs through Nov. 10 at the Briarcliff Manor campus of Pace University.

“The temple we belong to, there’s plenty of people who go down to Florida every year,” Arkin says.

The characters – Gerald, Lucy and Minka – don’t interact on stage. The play is told in three long monologues that read like short stories. Arkin’s portion, “The Man Who Married His Mother-in-Law,” runs 19 script pages, and is the longest of the three.

Lucy Martin follows Arkin with “Margaret Faydle Comes to Town.” After Martin, it’s “Match Wits with Minka Lupino,” performed by Andrea Gallo. Audiences might remember Gallo from a production of John Patrick Shanley’s “Italian-American Reconciliation” at Mamaroneck’s Emelin Theatre a couple of seasons ago.

Arkin says he decided to tackle a long monologue, in part, because he really didn’t know how to approach it.

“When I have seen this type of theater in the past, one of the places where I feel it often fails is in the lack of a decision about who the person is talking to and why they’re telling the story,” he says.

“When you have a character on stage addressing an audience in this setting, the big question I have is, ‘Why am I telling this story to these people?’ Because the dramatic event to me is not the story that’s being told, but the action that’s taking place right now, which is the telling of the story.”

The answer to that question is one that the audience will never know, Arkin says. It’ll be between him and Hudson Stage director Dan Foster.

“It’s not important that the audience know what’s going on in my head, that they know the reason I’m telling the story,” Arkin says. “But if I’m in a real place and have a real reason for telling this story, the action will be drastically different.”

If, at the outset, he’s not exactly sure how he’ll make it happen, he’s sure of one thing: He’s seen it done wrong before.

“Some of the most disastrous evenings I’ve seen in the theater have been one-person shows where the story is interesting but you’re being lectured at, instead of having a theatrical experience.”

“A theatrical experience involves a person going through a transformation that we’re witnessing,” he says.

Arkin’s theatrical experience includes Broadway runs of “Losing Louie,” “Laughter on the 23rd Floor” and “The Sunshine Boys,” in which he appeared alongside Jack Klugman and Tony Randall.

He has lived in Manhattan, Chappaqua, Los Angeles and, for the last 10 years, Scarsdale.

Arkin’s wife, Pamela, teaches fitness classes in Scarsdale, using a technique designed by a dancer that involves deep, intense muscle work.

“I’ve done it a few times,” says Arkin. “And I leave the room shaking and sobbing.”

“Whenever Matt gets on stage, he always stands up straight, but not in real life,” Pamela Arkin says. “When he was in ‘Losing Louie,’ he took one of my classes and told me ‘When I was on stage, I could feel I was sore in all the right places.’ ”

Having some free time this fall, the actor decided to take the part at Hudson Stage because they asked and “because I thought it would be a good exercise.”

It’s the kind of exercise he used to abhor.

“Early on my career, I hated the thought of standing alone on stage and talking to the audience, but I kept getting cast in roles where I had to do just that.”

He made his Broadway debut playing Louis, the narrator, in Neil Simon’s “Laughter on the 23rd Floor” and took the role onto a national tour for six months.

He also did “Talley’s Folly” at the Bay Street Theater in the Hamptons, opposite Jessica Hecht. That role, too, involved long speeches.

Pamela says Matthew and his brother built up an ability to learn lines from years of helping their father learn his lines.

“You keep learning things in this job,” Arkin says.

Sometimes, the learning process takes place well into the run of a show.

Arkin tells a story about being in “The Sunshine Boys.”

“We had been running about three months and there was one line of Tony’s that didn’t get a laugh and it was such an obvious laugh line,” he says.

“Every night, I’d watch him not get a laugh on this line and I was younger then – and probably a bit of a jerk – and I’m watching him, going ‘How is he not getting a laugh with that line? How is this possible, that Tony Randall can’t get a laugh with this line? He’s really screwing it up somehow.’

“And then one night, I realized, ‘Oh, it’s my fault he’s not getting a laugh.’ I was looking at him when he said the line, instead of not looking at him and then turning to him after the line. Half the time, audiences need to be cued to the jokes and one of the ways they know that was a joke is when the characters on the stage turn and react.

“From then on, he got the laugh.”

Did the young Arkin tell Randall he had fixed it?

“No. I think he thought he finally got the laugh,” Arkin says with a laugh. “The audience finally shaped up.”

The nine-month run of “The Sunshine Boys,” which started 10 years ago this fall, gave the Arkins the nest egg they needed to buy an apartment in Scarsdale.

That was also when their son, Sam, was born. Sam is now 9, with a 3-year-old sister, Abby.

One day they’ll help their father learn his lines. And choose his words carefully.

“Murderers”
Where: Woodward Hall Theatre, Pace University 235 Elm Road, Briarcliff Manor.
When: Oct. 26 through Nov. 10. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. on Oct. 28 and Nov. 4; Saturday matinee at 3 p.m. Nov. 10.
Tickets: $25, general admission; $20 for students and seniors. Group rates available. Pace discount tickets are $15.
Call: 914-271-2811.
Web: www.hudsonstage.com.

(Photo by Frank Becerra Jr.)