MORNING’S AT SEVEN
by Paul Osborne
Directed by Dan Wackerman
Theatre at St Clements
Official Website
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Reviewed by David Spencer
It’s a sweet play, Morning’s at Seven, Paul Osborne’s fictional homage to his real life elderly aunts, portrayed as four sisters in a small town, living as neighbors…two of them in the same house, sister #1 (Lindsay Crouse) with her husband (Dan Lauria), sister #2 (Alley Mills) in love with the husband. The two who live separately have their own husbandesque problems. Husband (John Rubinstein) of the sister #3 (Alma Cuervo) is given to bouts of existential anxiety (quaintly referred to as “spells”); husband (Tony Roberts) of sister #4 (Patty McCormack) remains calmly, steadfastly, coolly aloof from his in-laws, to the point of consigning his wife to the upstairs of their house, while he lives downstairs, if she ever visits them again; which of course she does. Sister #3 also has a shy, introverted grown son (Jonathan Spivey), who has been courting the same woman (Keri Saran ) for twelve years without crossing the line into marriage.
Morning’s at Seven is also very much an actors’ play; if cast with seasoned (mostly) old pros, and you can see nothing but in the cast cited above, it—well, I was on the verge of typing “practically plays itself,” but we know that isn’t true: A director is needed to marshall the forces and set the tone—but said director also needs to understand that the play doesn’t need much in the way of interpretive help; that the behavior, even when an extreme personality is involved, needs to seem naturalistic; and that his duty to the play, where the actors are concerned, is to block it, encourage it and at least seem to be staying out of its way. Fortunately, in Dan Wackerman, the new production at St. Clements has precisely such a fellow at the helm.
And what’s left to say…except that’s given the pendulum swing of the zeitgeist these days, Morning’s at Seven may be viewed by some as a revival out of its time. But if it has anything left to prove, it may be that it’s okay to take a breather from even the most urgent need for updated relevance, every now and again…