Old. old, old, old. Of all the adjectives that apply to the revival of "Morning's at Seven" that opened last night at the Lyceum, that one describes it best. The play itself is not all that old, strictly speaking (Paul Osborn wrote it in 1939), but it feels positively archaic. It tells the story of four sisters who live in a small Midwestern town in 1938. Its bittersweet comedy, back-porch setting, and abiding concerns with frustrated love and real estate all suggest the guiding influence of Chekhov- though Chekhov never wrote a play as geriatric as this.
The four sisters are all in their 60's, their three husbands are older still (Aaronetta has no husband- she is a spinster who lives with her sister Cora and her husband Theodore). The play's "youngsters" are Homer, the 40-year old son of Aaronetta's sister Ida; and Myrtle, his 39-year old fiancee. "Morning's at Seven" traces the way their lives are disrupted when Homer brings Myrtile home to meet the family.
It's not the characters that make the play feel so musty, it's the old-fashioned approach to theater. Director Daniel Sullivan, who brought us last season's back-porch play, "Proof," once again serves up a show that drowns in its' own minutiae. Like "Proof," its fourth wall naturalism makes for stultifying theater. I'd bet the top ticket price of $65 that the story would lose nothing if it were filmed instead of staged. (I'd pay even more if somebody could convince me it's worthwhile to do either).
The cast standouts are William Biff McQuire, who is understatedaas Theodore (he lets the audience do the reacting for him, to wonderful effect) and Elizabeth Franz, who is a sharp, funny Aaronetta. It's a pity Christopher Lloyd, who plays Homer's befuddled father Carl, doesn't have more to do. A tip of the hat also goes to Brian MacDevitt, whose lighting design is a thing of beauty, despite the banality of what he is asked to illuminate.
A final note on age. People tend to talk more loudly when they don't hear as well as they once did, even in a theater. You can imagine the difficulties presented by an audience comprised entirely of contemporaries of this play's characters. My grievance is not with the audible talkers. It is with the people who insisted on shushing them, loudly and disrespectfully. Four hundred years ago, "Hamlet" premiered before noisy, enormous crowds that stood for hours in the open air. Can't we tolerate even a little conversation today? The answer, from shushers old and young alike, is a deafening "no." Having trained us to grow exasperated when an audience is not silent as the tomb, the modern theater thus sows its own unpopularity, and makes curmudeons of us all.

The article is accompanied by a black and white photo of Piper Laurie and Buck Henry- IN OLDEN DAYS Piper Laurie and Buck Henry in Paul Osborn's "Morning's at Seven"