STAGE REVIEW : Golden Years Turn Leaden in ‘Eighties’

First came “The Gin Game.” Then came “On Golden Pond.” Then television got into the act with “The Golden Girls.” Anyway you slice it, age has been having its 15 minutes of celebrity throughout the ‘80s. With any luck, “The Eighties,” a new play by Tom Cole that opened Monday at the Westwood Playhouse, may be signaling the last of those 15 minutes.

“The Eighties” is not about the decade that is drawing to a close, but about being in one’s 80s--and it is about as different a view of that landscape as it is possible to have from Malcolm Cowley’s delicate and inspired book of reflections on the subject, “The View From 80.”

Granted: To each his own view. But Cole’s is depressingly counterfeit. It is that of a younger man with limited vision who will write anything for a laugh. And it isn’t even good dramaturgy.

“The Eighties” offers a day in the life of a long-married octogenarian couple from breakfast through lunch, through supper, through midnight snack--an endlessly repetitious cycle of tasks and talk stretching from nowhere to nowhere.

The play is, in fact, one and the same ongoing conversation transformed in only minor ways by the hour of the day or the nature of the meal at hand. Or not. Since food--present, absent or potentially available--is the central preoccupation here, the play aptly takes place in a kitchen: a gleaming, upscale and inviting condo kitchen designed and lit by Kent Dorsey. But since Cole depicts his couple as virtually incapable of significant consecutive thought, you wonder briefly how these two bumblers manage to keep it so spotless.

Briefly, because it is soon apparent that, aside from being full of cliches, this play is also full of holes. Cole never provides any genuine information about these two except the merest suggestion that they were once apparently quite well educated (they spout Latin and know their classical music) and that they have four intimidating children who now live elsewhere and call on Saturdays.

Unconvincingly, the couple’s current state of disrepair (more symptomatic of 108 than 80) would seem to have engulfed the better part of their minds.

The breakfast scene is funny, largely because it is first. She (Audra Lindley) complains about slowing down or slowing up (a good 10 minutes is devoted to deciding which) while He (James Whitmore) tries to ignore her ramblings and read the paper. But after we’ve heard about all that--and about the difficulty of chopping vegetables--morning, noon and night, the subject, to put it charitably, grows tiresome.

By the time the preoccupation with lunch turns into a preoccupation with sex and how best to use the salad topping during the afternoon nap, it’s more than the cream that’s turned sour.

It’s not a matter of prudishness, but the sudden recognition that this play doesn’t have an authentic bone in its body. People in their 80s are not automatically deprived of intelligence, dignity or real feelings--including those governing love and sex. What’s wrong here is that Cole has nothing to say about being 80 that is not derisive or cartoonish. His view is restricted to demeaning cliches and a predictable litany of physical ailments catalogued by a pair of diminishing minds. If “The Eighties” starts with a bang, it ends with a wince.

The actors cannot be blamed for this demoralizing state of affairs, although Whitmore overdoes the staggering around as though he were 110 and about to expire. Lindley is much more restrained and precise--and comical--and even manages to distract us now and then from the fact that this is a thoroughly minor comedy in the grip of terminal shallowness.

Director Lamont Johnson, who has done some excellent work in other situations, might have tempered Whitmore’s excesses and insisted on lopping off a good 30 minutes from this round-robin play. It would not have cured its ills (most notably the fact that there is no emotional or other development), but it would at least have shortened our misery--a misery not shared by the traditionally enthusiastic and unreliable opening night audience.

At 10886 Le Conte Ave. in Westwood, Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m.; Fridays, 8:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 3 and 8:30 p.m.; Sundays, 3 and 7 p.m. Ends Dec. 31. Tickets: $20-$28. (213) 208-5454.