THEATER REVIEW: 'Morning's At Seven'

Paul Osborn’s “Morning’s at Seven” has dawned at Manatee Players. It’s a sweet, intimate meditation on time and possibility unfolding in the lives of four sisters (all on the downhill side of 50) in a small Midwestern town in 1938. It’s a day in a life — two days, actually. But that’s time enough for everything to change.

Before the change, let’s talk about the status quo. Three sisters live in two side-by-side cottages. Cora (Carol Nelson) and her husband, Thor (Joseph Allen Smith), occupy the cottage on the left. Another sister, Aaronetta (Sami Blouin), lives with them. She moved in at age 17 and never moved out. Esther (Erica Drezek) lives with her husband, David (Roy McChesney), a few miles down the road. (David refuses to let her visit her sisters. He’s a retired professor and thinks they’re morons. Esther sneaks around and visits anyway.) Ida (Connie Farris) and her husband, Carl (Alex Topp), reside on the cottage on the left. Their son, Homer (Ken Basque), resides with them. He’s 40 years old, with a seven-year engagement (and five-year courtship) with Myrtle (Kristi Hibschman). Carl’s built a house for the couple and plans to hand over the keys when they’re married. But, thanks to Homer’s procrastination, the place has been sitting empty for five years. In an unrelated development, Carl’s been having “spells” — existential crises in which he agonizes about who he is and where he’s going. But Carl always settles down. The status quo maintains — so far.

The stasis breaks when Homer finally shows up with his fiancée — whom nobody’s ever actually seen. Suddenly, everything’s in play. Will Carl move in with David? Will Cora rent the house promised to Homer and Myrtle? Who winds up with whom? Who ends up where?

Relax. This is a Paul Osborn comedy, not a Eugene O'Neill tragedy. You can safely assume that everyone winds up where they should be.

But the destination’s not as important as the journey. It’s a character-centered play filled with indescribable sweetness and close observation. Osborn clearly loved his characters. On top of that, Director Pam Wiley and all the actors involved clearly love them, too.

The production’s rich with subtle attention to detail: Hibschman’s Julia Sweeney-eque comic laugh as Myrtle; Smith’s muttered asides and evasions as Thor; Basque’s not-so-subtle changing of the subject as Homer; the low-key snobbery of McChesney’s David; the combative fire of Blouin’s Aaronetta and Nelson’s Cora; the contrasting let’s-not-fight approach of Drezek’s Esther and Farris’ Ida; the dignity of Carl’s quiet desperation when he has his spells. All these closely observed glimpses make the past and implied relationships and family history of these characters real to you. I’m assuming they were very real to the actors who played them. They’ll probably find it hard to say goodbye to their characters when the play ends its run.

“Morning’s at Seven” does what good theater should do. It creates a believable world and draws you into it. Kudos for Ralph Nurmela’s amazingly evocative sets, Jean Letarte’s period-precise costumes and Patrick Bedell’s haunting lighting design. They gave this lost world a tangible reality.

It’s sad to let the characters inhabiting this world go.

But it’s a privilege to have met them.

IF YOU GO 

“Morning’s at Seven” runs through Oct. 5, at Manatee Performing Arts Center, 502 Third Ave. W., Bradenton.

For more information, call 748-5875 or visit manateeplayers.com.