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[THEATER REVIEW] MORNING'S AT SEVEN at BERKSHIRE THEATRE FESTIVAL
8.4.07
BERKSHIRE THEATRE FESTIVAL
Morning's at Seven
by Paul Osborn
Directed by Vivian Matalon
Through August 11, 2007
review by SETH ROGOVOY, editor-in-chief and critic-at-large, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
(STOCKBRIDGE, Mass., August 4, 2007) -- In the brilliantly staged and superbly acted Morning's at Seven at berkshire Theatre Festival, Jane Austen meets Anton Chekhov
filtered through the sensibility of Woody Allen with a little Monty Python thrown in for good measure.
This riotously funny extended-family drama, all of which takes place in the backyards of two adjacent homes owned by sisters and their husbands (houses, which by the way, are mind-boggling in their verisimilitude -- we spent many minutes trying to figure out how they moved real houses onto the stage at BTF, which of course they didn't -- they built
them to suit, and the result is a breathtaking set), has a bit of farce to it, but a lot of emotional truth and poignancy.
The nine-member ensemble hasn't a weak link, and in fact is a textbook example of professional acting at its best -- no star turns, no stars, but just solid actors who can play sad, pathetic, angry, pretentious, and, of course, funny.
Special shout-outs go to Kevin Carolan as Homer Bolton, the aging bachelor/mama's boy who's on the verge of asking his girlfriend of five, seven, or twelve years (the time seemed to change depending on how you counted) to marry him, setting off a chain reaction that rocks the family relationships among the four sisters and their husbands to the core. Carolan is that great, old-fashioned style of actor who plays straight but broad, and the end result is hysterical (think Chaplin or Keaton).
Other standouts were Jonathan Hogan as Carl Bolton, Homer's dad, a house builder undergoing an existential crisis (they called them "spells" back then), and Christianne Tisdale as Myrtle Brown, Homer's unfortunate girlfriend, who is as wacky as anyone in the family, and therefore is the perfect addition to this wild bunch.
The thing is, this wild bunch really isn't so wild, as one of the sister's husbands points out. In fact, they're a bunch of "morons" (the word use in the play, which was written in pre-P.C. days, thankfully), although by the end of the evening we come to appreciate that even morons like these are the stuff of great drama.
Director Vivian Matalon obviously knows this play inside out, and the comic and tragic timing of the events as they unfold was masterful.
At nearly three hours running time, this could have been another LONG night at the theater. In fact, it was an utter delight to lose oneself in the comic tribulations of this clueless bunch.
In the end, this was one of the most enjoyable nights out at the theater all summer.
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