Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

The standout in St. Jean’s Players’ production of Morning’s At Seven, Paul Osborn’s 1939 yarn about four aging sisters in a small Midwestern town, is the actress Pauline Walsh. She doesn’t arrive on stage until roughly halfway through the first act, but once she does it’s hard to watch a scene without her. Her pursed lips coupled with her doubtful stare, as though she knows the truth but she’ll let you finish lying before she calls you on it, say more than ten pages of dialogue.

The other cast members don’t quite reach Walsh’s level, but there are some fine performances among them, such as Mark Rosenstein’s nebbish Carl Bolton, who finds himself in an existential predicament that causes problems for his family. Marilyn Duryea (Ida Bolton) and David Mackler (Homer Bolton) are also good as the needy mother and mama’s boy respectively and deliver quite a funny scene about underwear.

Osborn’s slow but compelling play evokes a far away, simpler time but never feels dated. Aaronetta (Sharon O’Neal) shares a house with her sister Cora Swanson (M.C. Waldrep) and Cora’s husband Theodore “Thor” Swanson (Marc Gettis). Their sister Ida, Ida’s husband Carl, and Carl and Ida’s son Homer live next to them and share the backyard with the Swansons, and the oldest sister Esther lives nearby with her patronizing husband David (John Short). When Homer finally brings home Myrtle (Lucy Apicello), whom he’s been seeing for some time but hasn’t yet asked to marry her, the whole family is forced to face what they each should have done a long time ago.

Greg Guiteras’s set, an intimate backyard with two back porches, uses a transfixing mix of real and cardboard shrubbery and leaves director Bryan McHaffey plenty of room to maneuver his large cast. The direction is particularly notable in the ensemble scenes, with each character occupying one space on stage but in fact lost in his or her own world. Jay Fink’s lighting and M.C. Waldrop’s costumes perfectly conjure the Midwest surroundings and era.

St. Jean’s Players, an off-off-Broadway theatre troupe, has a nice production on its hands. Those who missed the star-studded, critically-acclaimed 2002 revival as well as those who want to revisit this modest theater gem will enjoy both the play and this lesser-known but appealing cast.