Rhetorical Tic

The Loves of Cass McGuire, by Brian Friel, whispers along for three feeble acts, but it has no secret to tell. It whispers of dead young brides and deaf old crones, of dreams, fantasies and betrayals, of the brief pleasure and passing pain some men give some women, and of how the life of the old drowns in memory. The bitter beauty of human existence that irradiated Playwright Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come! last season nowhere shines in this play.

The heroine, Cass McGuire (Ruth Gordon), has spent a lifetime in America and gone back to Ireland--to a rest home, cruelly enough. The occupants are in their anecdotage, but none more so than Cass. With her sandpiper walk and her sandpaper voice, Ruth Gordon jigs and jaws through meandering monologues evenly divided between past loves and barroom drolleries.

Playwright Friel never stopwatches a line, and he has a rhetorical tic. Talk may be the crust of drama, but it can never be the core.

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