Pssst! If you’re looking for a top-drawer, first-rate cast of Broadway and off-Broadway vets in a five-alarm revival, have I got a show for you! It’s Paul Osborn’s 1939 classic, Morning’s at Seven.
Who’s in the cast fitting that Broadway/off-Broadway description? Thought you’d never ask. Billed in alphabetical order, they’re Lindsey Crouse, Alma Cuervo, Dan Lauria, Patty McCormack, Tony Roberts, and John Rubinstein. Alley Mills, who’s won her stripes on the West Coast, is aboard, as are younger roustabouts Keri Safran and Jonathan Spivey.
Wait a sec. Did I say Patty McCormack? I did. She’s back on a New York stage for the first time since 1957, when she closed as young and murderous Rhoda in The Bad Seed. And could she scare the pants off you? She sure could. I know. I wass dere. Does she have now what she had then? You can bet on it and be a winner.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
McCormack and cohorts all have it, under Dan Wackerman’s direction. As head of the Peccadillo Theater Company, he rarely, if ever, misses. (The fairly recent Counsellor-at-Law testifies to that.) Nor can you question his choice. with Woodie Guthrie Jr’s New Federal Theatre, of Morning’s at Seven, which, oddly enough, had only a short run in its original outing. (It landed a Tony for the 1980 revival.)
Osborn, born in Evansville, Indiana, surely had somewhere very like Evansville in mind when he placed Morning’s at Seven in a 1922 American town. In that dozy environ sisters Esther (McCormack), Cora (Crouse), Arry (Mills), and Ida (Cuervo) live and seem to thrive, at least occasionally. Two of them reside in mirror-image houses next to each other. (Set designer Harry Feiner perfectly realizes the exteriors, complete with welcoming porches.)
Fourth sister, usually called Esty, lives a few blocks away, only a short distance by foot but quite a distance off by another measure. Esty’s husband, David (Roberts), considers himself something of a thinker and looks down on Est’s clan as being (his word) “morons.” He disdains them so that he won’t allow them in his home, which, if not literally perched above the two residences, is perched above them from his self-righteous perspective.
The other much more forgiving husbands, Thor (Lauria), married to Cora, and Carl (Rubinstein), married to Ida, concern themselves with their own problems. From all outward appearances, Thor, is in in control of matters . He’s happy with Cora, but then there’s fretful Arry, who’s been part of their household for something like 45 years. Carl, a dentist by trade, is all wrought up about where he’s gone wrong in life and therefore a constant handful for Ida. He regularly threatens to search out the “fork,” where he thinks he went wrong years back.
As Osborn presents it, these particular small towners allow events to go wrong before they are possibly capable of going right during a supposedly special affair. Momma’s boy Homer (Spivey) is bringing home aims-to-please Myrtle (Safran), to whom he’s been engaged for seven years. He’s expected finally to Myrtle and then live in the house on the hill that Carl has long since built for them.
For three acts (here with a single intermission after act one), troubles develop for Cora and Arry over Thor’s place in their relationship. Carl loses his flimsy composure to Ida’s repeated dismay. Homer dilly-dallies over his intentions with Myrtle and forfeits the deed to that still-empty house. David catches Esty where she shouldn’t be and has a perplexing philosophy chat with addled Carl. Furthermore, other confrontations accrue as well as more secrets spill.
All the while, Osborn looks to be writing about the people he knew while growing up. Having left Evansville behind to become a sophisticated New York and Hollywood writer, he does, however, occasionally give the impression that, like the demeaning David, he is looking down on them. Possibly, this is helmer Wackerman’s initial inclination, too. Whatever, whichever, the drawbacks dissipate as the neatly plotted confrontations overlap and Cora, Thor, Arry et al no longer need to overemphasize quaint small-town ways.
As the actors—looking convincing in Barbara A. Bell’s costumes and under James E. Lawlor III’s afternoon and morning lights—deal with encompassing conflicts, they have their take-stage moments. Wackerman focusses them when their turn comes, so that they each exhibit a time-honed strength. There’s Crouse’s gravitas, Cuervo’s earthiness, Lauria’s masculine assurance, McCormack’s toughness, Mills’ wiliness, Roberts’ ease, Rubinstein’s flash, Safran’s joviality, and Spivey’s comic timidity.
In 1939, Osborn with his now weighty list of credits (On Borrowed Time, the South Pacific screenplay, only a few), was recalling 1922 as it appeared to him. As of this revival, audiences are watching activities taking place 99 years ago. No matter. Attitudes are always shifting, but human behavior doesn’t change. Therefore, if at first Morning’s at Seven seems only a backward glimpse at dated Americana, it’s not. Wackerman and company expertly see to the truth of that.
Mornings at Seven opened November 15, 2021, at the Theatre at St. Clement’s and runs through December 5. Tickets and information: morningsat7.com
