Veteran local actor Tom McCarthy came up with the idea to commemorate a 700-Level stalwart onstage - you know, the kind of guy who saw Eagles court close up, who snowballed Santa and voted twice for Frank Rizzo, the former mayor who said he'd "make Atilla the Hun look like a faggot."

Graham tries to give The Fan, his nameless Everyman, a heart of gold, and honor those pre-gentrification sports talkers who earned this town its solid reputation for bad sportsmanship.

To this end, McCarthy's Fan is cut whole from Archie Bunker cloth. Bunker, however, had an entire cast to balance and deflate his ranting; Graham sends The Fan out there alone, to opine on a barstool to an imaginary Dallas Cowboys fan (whose presence prompts The Fan to ask the imaginary bartender if he's now letting "queers" into the place).

Maybe The Philly Fan is Graham's attempt to appeal to non-theater-lovers, or to try to bridge the perceived gap between drama on the field and on the stage. But I grew up in and around Philly, have a fuzzy memory of riding in a honking car down Broad Street when the 1974 Flyers won the Stanley Cup, skipped school for the 1980 Phillies parade, sat courtside every year between Dr. J and Charles Barkley, and guess what? That makes me, and a lot of others like me, theater-loving Philly fans.

Perhaps I'm too much the first type of white person to appreciate the friendly racist and homophobe these days, at least in such a sympathetic and affectionate guise - but then again, who does, besides other racists and homophobes?

McCarthy and director Joe Canuso do their jobs just fine, and there are times when Graham gets the heartbreak of being a longtime sports lover in the 215 just right - our cursed luck extending even to poor four-legged Smarty Jones.

But too often it feels like a compendium of the city's professional athletic moments, the staged, culturally insensitive version of those one-man shows you see in museums before you're allowed into the main exhibit hall (right down to Jorge Cousineau's wraparound screens onto which are projected still and video images of nostalgia triggers like Connie Mack Stadium and Tug McGraw).

It's one thing for The Philly Fan to offer tribute to a suffering, blue-collar city that liked its players ugly; that's the stuff local mythology is made on. It's quite another for Graham to pay unchecked homage to ugliness of the spirit.

The Philly Fan

Through Oct. 4 at Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe St., Bristol. Tickets: $29-$37. Information: 215-785-0100 or www.BRTStage.org.