Blather

WATCHING Old Man Boyle is sort of like eavesdropping in Central Park--you hear people saying vague things about their ordinary lives because they don't have anything to do but talk. You listen to a couple of policemen boast; a few words erupt from Old Man Boyle, their senile ward; three crotchety sisters settle on a bench to complete their crossword puzzle; and a wanton woman who might have scrubbed floors in Blooming dale's for 20 years reminisces. Except there's something off-beat about this everyday company. There's a plaintive note in all of their voices that echoes the whine of the harmonica that was playing before you heard anyone talking. Their tone of voice suggests that they feel uncomfortable about encountering each other in a setting as real as a park in New York City.

The flaccid, middle-aged cop (Paul Suchecki) glibly compares the number of used cars in a lot to the quantity of hemorrhoids or crotch hairs he has. This tally isn't his only vulgar observation and surprisingly, they all slip by inoffensively. But Peter Fletcher's version of the naive cop doesn't jibe with his cohort's naturalness. His lithe, eager responses to the fat cop are always a little too slow in coming--his resemblance to an inept Stan Laurel fails to complement Suchecki's realistic performance.

The three sisters look like they have wandered out of an unsuccessful nursery rhyme. Auntie Pasta's striking pallor is accentuated by her puddle-blue coat and Auntie Awful is dourly dressed in pea green and black. Raima Evan's coy voice, which seems to pass through a kazoo, brings out the meddlesome but well-intentioned manner of Auntie Tomato.

Randy Howze, who plays Old Woman Pus--the prostitute or floorwasher--handles her smutty dialogue as easily as the fat cop spews his. She suspends a brazen account of her husband's set-to with constipation by rummaging bemusedly through the garbage or tranquilly scattering popcorn at the birds and Old Man Boyle. She coordinates her fickle behavior with the theme of insanity. Howze uses her spindly body delicately. She shapes her mouth into a crooked leer. And Old Woman Pus's complaint that her head is full of cobwebs emphasizes her resemblance to a spider with its graceful agility and venom.

The scatological obsessions in playwright Howard O'Brien's script are sort of dull, but the characters that lack them tend to buckle under familiar interpretations. O'Brien fills the play's most decrepit role as Old Man Boyle, who blathers sporadically about the 20 pounds of crap in his bowels, his putrid liver, leaden legs, rotting teeth, and sparse hair. Perched in his wheelchair, between the park bench and the garbage pail, he seems content to survey the progressive dissolution of others with a complicit smile that might be meant for a slyer old man, Beckett.